Latent Prints
by KCerena
Summary: An imprint gone wrong is a deadly thing, even when sutured by love. Too deadly, perhaps, for Leah to save her truest friend and alpha. Will passion trump fate when the light of Jake's life starts to thaw Leah's long-frozen heart?
1. Loving Nessie Cullen

A/N: *waves* Thanks for giving my story a shot! Read on to (eventually) discover how it's a crazy blend of Twilight and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Big thank you to Idealistic4ever and Britney for beta reading this initially, as well as CapriciousC and tiffanyanne3 for helping with a later revision. And no, I do not have the Twilight-ownage power to make things turn out my way for real.

Here's an extended summary: Six-year-old Nessie has led a life so sheltered that her first day of high school is cause for giddiness, her rapid aging so far having kept her confined to her family circle. But just when she's starting to worry that her strangeness will keep her cloistered up forever, she witnesses a tragic event and starts to accumulate life experience fast. The event forces Leah to come home from a stint as a ranger up in the Yukon, and she and Nessie click as freaks who wish they could be more normal. Their mutual understanding quickly starts evolving into something more, but the problem is that each considers Jake to be her best and oldest friend. Nessie knows that Jake is powerfully attached to her, though she doesn't know just _how_ powerfully, and neither she nor Leah knows how to keep him from getting badly hurt.

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you." - J.D. Salinger, _The Catcher in the Rye_

_Part I_

_~Renesmee~_

"That bad, huh?"

_Please let me be, Jake. _I shoot him a concerted little shrug-smile and duck around to the passenger's side, opening my door before he can finish heaving his body out of his own. I dunno why, really, but I don't want Jake to hug me in the parking lot. Not in front of everyone on my very first day of high school. Luckily for me, he doesn't seem to mind and drives off without further ado. Unluckily for me, he doesn't get the message that I'm not in a talking mood.

"Ness, hon, I'm sorry you didn't like it. You were all excited, and it was so cute…I just really hoped you'd have fun. That's why I wanted to pick you up today, so the 'rents couldn't drag you down with all their jadedness crap."

I have to giggle when Jake breaks out his impression of Dad- _erm_- _Edward_. "Condemning you to this eternity, Bella…unforgivable, I say! The bloodsucking builds character, but high school? _Ai me!_"

He finishes with a brow-wiping gesture that would usually put me in stitches, but I'm just not in the mood to make fun of my weirdo parents right now. Truth be told, I'm more in the mood to sit and slouch, hiding in my hair as best I can. I haven't worn it down like this since the last time Alice dressed me, given how itchy curls distract the vamp senses like no other, but the hair came down after first period today, just after I stopped having fun.

Unfortunately, a part of me is not feeling the slouch routine- my twitching left hand that I have to smack down when it tries to reach across my body. The things Jake wants to know about are needling my mind, begging me to share them with anyone and everyone around me. The problem is that I know giving in would just make me feel worse. I feel exposed and dirty when my brain goes and flashes my friend, showing him how touchy I am and how little there is to me in general.

I wait to touch Jake's cheek until I know I'm in control, then give him a long look at his own concerned, puppyish expression. I make sure he notices the less-than-flattering flare of his nostrils, and that he doesn't notice that parts of me that want to relax and be babied. Jake doesn't need to know how little it took to upset me today of all days; all he needs to know is that his prying is pathetic and annoying.

He pushes my hand away more gently than my bratty behavior deserves, squeezing it to show me that he isn't mad or anything.

"Geez, Ness, do I really look like that? Guess I'm lucky I have you to be honest with me." He gives a theatrical wince, but I can tell he meant what he said. "Don't get me wrong, Ness. I hated high school as much as the next guy, but you've been dying to go…for years, really."

Jake's right, of course. He's pretty much always right. I twist my fingers through his and rest my head in the hollow beneath his shoulder. The car veers right, and the force nestles me tightly against his side. We're hurtling through the fog along the windiest highway in state, but you'd never know it with Jake driving as smoothly as you please. My Jacob takes such good care of me….maybe he _would_ understand. At least if I open up with words instead of a too-revealing picture dump.

"Jake… did you ever read _The Catcher in the Rye_?"

"Uhh, does SparkNotes count?" Right. _That's_ why he hated high school. I slouch limply against him and mumble my next words at the floor.

"So there's this boy who thinks that grownups are incredibly fake and stupid. He likes to look at statues of Eskimos in a museum. The statues are really pretty, and they're telling this perfect story about life up north, but all he can think about when he looks at them is that nothing remotely alive could ever be like that, staying pretty forever and telling the same story over and over."

I know the book by heart of course, but I still slipped it into my school bag. I poked my hand under the bag flap at least a hundred times today, feeling for the worn-out place in the binding. The lines on that page are the only proof I have that some humans wish they were like us… beautiful and motionless with one purpose in the world. One purpose forever. I thought after today that I might have a different kind of proof… a friend maybe, or at least a loser who wanted to be my friend.

Jacob is smirking, definitely making fun of me. Not for the right reasons though, I think- thank _God_.

"_Right_. You've spent your whole life cooped up in a house with the biggest library in the state, and now you don't like high school 'cause you thought it'd have a better _reading list_."

I squirm away from the concern that's threatening to well up in his face again. Unfortunately for both of us, he doesn't get the hint.

"Don't worry if you haven't made any friends yet. Their eyes just need a bit of time. To adjust to your gorgeousness, ya know?"

Great. This is exactly the conversation I was hoping _not_ to have. "Jake, you know perfectly well that vampires don't make friends. Bella was the only human in a zillion years of high school whose eyes ever 'adjusted' to their 'gorgeousness.' Ever." I cower behind two pairs of big, obnoxious air quotes, then hurry to clench my arms against another spasm of images.

It's true that _Bella_ always wanted to become a vampire for Edward, but that's not the same as Holden wanting to be like the statues in the museum. He knew that they were different from him, inside and out, but Bella has always been like them on the inside.

According to Renee, Bella was born thirty-five, and I can see it in the pictures that march from left to right along Charlie's mantlepiece. The face gets thinner and older, but the expression never changes much at all. Bella looks like she's waiting for them to stop taking her picture so her life can get started already, a look that doesn't go away even in the very last picture of the bunch. The one where Bella's in her wedding dress, about to walk down the aisle. That last picture seems like it completes and explains all the others, telling you what she was waiting for all that time. Weaving the line of pictures into a story I know better than I know myself.

Our mantlepiece at home sports a different timeline of photos, a timeline spanning half as many years and a much more varied set of expressions. They don't seem to tell a story though; they just show me getting bigger. It's hard for me to decide who I understand less, really, between the princess dress-bedecked toddler and the face I see in the mirror nowadays.

The story on Charlie's mantlepiece is beautiful and perfect, but one day I stared at it and realized it wasn't complete. I couldn't put my finger on what sort of picture was missing, and my parents, when questioned, said that of course it was the whole story, what was I talking about? Bella said her life had been boring and ordinary, not like mine, and that it stopped being either of those things when Edward came along. One day though, Renee asked Bella whatever had happened to some old scrapbook. She brought it down, but started flipping much too fast for Renee to follow.

As soon as I saw the missing picture, I knew what it was and grabbed it. Not what it _was,_ exactly, but just that it needed to go on Charlie's mantlepiece. Funny I thought that, seeing how it looked like a picture of Edward all by himself. But Bella was practically screaming out of the negative space, like how some people look at that picture of two faces and see the 'vase' between them instead.

Sure enough, Bella was there when I smoothed the picture flat. Standing next to Edward in the middle of Charlie's living room, the two of them wedged apart by a narrow sliver of carpet, wall, and sofa.

I shoved the creased photo in Bella's face, in Edward's face, knowing that this was the missing story piece and wanting them to tell me why. They shied away and told me not to worry, that it was nothing. Then Bella buried her face in Edward's neck for an hour, lifting her shield to show him things they wouldn't show to me. Renee knew a little about what the picture meant, how Edward's family had left for L.A. and he and Bella had split for a while. Alice told me the rest of it later as she braided my hair out on the porch.

Neither Bella nor Charlie wanted the missing picture on the mantlepiece where it belonged. I had to content myself with knowing that it existed and looking for others that seemed to flesh out the dark side of the story. I found pictures of Bella in Phoenix, looking pale and fidgety in the sunshine, not seeming to care whether she's standing next to other girls or not. When other girls _are_ nearby, they stretch away from my mom toward the sunshine, confused by her indifference to sunlight and their smiles. I saw that sort of confusion a lot in real life today, on the faces of students when they looked at Bella and also when they looked at me.

Jake is trying to comfort me still…I'll just _bet_ he knows that people thought I was weird like the rest of them today. That they lumped me in with the rest of the family and didn't get me at all.

"Your folks didn't make any friends because they don't really care about _people_, Nessie. That's not you at all; you're half human and you're _interested_ in humans. You've been wanting to see how the other half lives since before you knew that your folks weren't technically alive."

I cringe at the tasteless wordplay and let my head smack hard against the headrest. But then hot, rough fingers start to ghost over my skin, and I melt in response to the heat above my cheekbones. The fingers move gently to the bones around my eyes, then butterfly-kiss my lips and jaw like a hot desert breeze.

I'll never feel the winds that parch Phoenix or the Grand Canyon in the daytime. I've lived near the coast all my life and have never seen the beach on a proper sunny day; _maybe_ my sparkling isn't that bad, but it could damange our family's reputation like a straw on a very fragile camel's back. My Jacob is the brightest sun I'll ever be allowed to know, and I guess I should try harder to appreciate him like he deserves. Appreciate him for probably _knowing_ I'd have a lousy first day of school, which may very well be the reason he suggested we drive to the seashore.

He rubs the tip of his nose along the ridge inside my ear, and I bask in the heat of the breath that tickles my skin. I marvel, incidentally, at how his driving stays perfectly steady, not feeling a single jolt or hiccup as he comforts me.

"You've never been as weird as the rest of them. They smell like they just took a bath in cologne, but you smell like a person, just… better. Also, you really _walk_, like the ground is something that matters. You're pale, but-"

"If snow be white, why then my breasts are dun.

You love to hear me speak, yet well you know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound."

"You know, you're not gonna make any friends by being a smart ass all the time."

"You couldn't even get through Shakespeare's Sonnets? They're like, fourteen lines long!"

"That's a _love poem_? Why's he being so mean?"

"You're the one who reminded me of it."

"Whatever… you know what I was trying to say."

I look out the window to see the overcast ocean far below us, glittering from the slivers of afternoon light that get through the clouds. Jacob turns off the engine and scrambles out of the truck, darting around to offer me his hand. I turn up my nose at him and scramble out on my own. Being half human does _not_ make me as clumsy as Grandpa Charlie.

As I leave our cliffside parking space, I try to lean through every heel-to-toe weight shift, moving my hips in a way that shouldn't give people the wrong idea about how gravity works. But Jacob's low whistle tells me he's definitely getting the wrong idea about _something_. I shoot him a glare and try to moderate my hip movements. Why is it so _hard_ to get away from the dorky astronaut walk that makes me just about _die_ when one of them does it in public?

"So you're ropin' them in with a sexy new walk!" Jacob's grin has become annoying as hell, and I lapse into a more efficient stride. It may look dorky, but at least it'll get me to where I can hit him already.

"It is _not_ a sexy walk! It's a normal human walk that Alice'll have to practice 'til she can stop embarrassing me at school! Even Bella's already forgotten how to move like a normal human. They look like they're fresh off a spaceship from Mars, and I'm the semi-freak cousin who's helping them apply to be citizens of Earth!"

At lunch today, there was a brown-skinned freshman who stared at us for an hour, gawking even as he hid something furtively beneath his lunchbox flap. He should really thank his lucky stars that packing weird food is the worst way his parents can embarrass him at school. How would he like to have his parents sit next to him, wafting spices through the room like they're God's freaking gift to humanity or something? And every girl who gaped at Edward needs to thank her lucky stars that _her_ father has to go to work all day. I'm actually _glad_ Edward bothered to glare at every guy who noticed me, because each of those glares meant five whole seconds when he couldn't give Bella a look that was _way_ more disgusting than _anything_ those guys could've been thinking. Why on earth can't my parents just sneak gropes all day, like Rose and Emmett and all normal teenagers do? At least they'd have to hide that from the vice principal. The only reason they're allowed to stare like that in public is that normal people don't_ do _that, period!

Jake pokes me, forcing me back to the present, and I gear up to swing at him in earnest.

"Nessie, trust me when I say that your mom _never_ knew how to move like a normal human. She was never all that interested in what normal humans do. Seriously; I wonder where you get it from."

Jacob fends off my attack easily and pulls me onto the ground, settling me in his big, warm lap. I nuzzle his chest, soothed by his warmth once again.

"From you, of course. You've always been my human half… you and Renee and Charlie and Seth. Why can't I start visiting La Push when you go? They all know what I am… I just want to know them too."

I've asked the same question at least a hundred times before. Every time he answers with the exact same words, but he always seems to mean something different, something weird. His arms seem to stiffen around the air that touches my body; he feels a little like Jasper felt all those years ago, when I threw my arms around him for the first and last time and everyone in the room got so scared they stopped breathing. For the record, I'm _definitely_ less breakable than _Jacob_ is.

"Your mom doesn't want you spending time at La Push yet. Maybe… I hope she'll let me bring you there soon."

Maybe if I knew what he was really trying to say, the words might start to make a tiny bit of sense. I _know_ the Quileutes are prejudiced against vampires, and I _know_ they wanted to kill me before I was born, but the reason they couldn't do it is that Jacob is an alpha wolf, and as long as his orders protect me I'll be perfectly safe in La Push! Some Quileutes might hate me the way Jake hates Rose, but one of them might become the friend it looks like I'm not likely to make at school. It's so stupid, now that I think about it, that I thought I'd ever fit in at school. Maybe I look less weird than my mom, but at least she has a childhood to remember. She knows what it means to hate stuff like middle school dances, but for me, when kids refer to stuff like that? I draw a blank and have to go away.

Edward and Bella give humans way too little credit, and Jacob didn't stand for that crap when it came to Charlie and Renee. He didn't even consider letting them keep me away from my grandparents, and I don't see why he's caving on the La Push issue. I've tried throwing tantrums, and I've tried being adorable… maybe I need to pool the force of those two weapons. I stick out my lower lower lip, and try not to let my normal tirade distort my face.

"Bella knows better than anyone what it's like to hate being different. I know how she felt when Edward made her stay human for so long… all I want is a place where I can be human without it being weird! _She's_ the one who gave up everything to be a monster… _I_ never wanted to give up sunshine or childhood or any of it, and it's not _fair_ for her to make me give up anything extra now. Besides, Alice told me how you used to sneak Bella to La Push behind Edward's back. It's completely hypocritical for you and Bella to take Edward's side now!"

"I know, Ness, but it's a different situation. It's really complicated, and I'm sorry it has to be this way."

Jake covers his eyes with the heels of his hands, and he really does look sorry. It kills me whenever he stops being his cheerful self. I'm sorry I always have to do this to him, but I just wish I knew _why_ he won't take me to La Push.

I breathe a sigh of relief when he snaps out of it pretty quickly, flashing me a grin and giving me a playful squeeze.

"Speaking of things Bella snuck around to do with me, I thought you wanted to try cliff diving!"

I'd almost forgotten what we drove out here to do. The sea looks perfect… just bubbly enough to be interesting, and streaked with tawny trails of the light that colors at dusk.

The reds and oranges are brighter here than in Forks, but not bright enough to touch the exciting parts of the scene. U-shaped cliffs take big chunks out of my vision, and the water crashing against them could hide anything at all… murky forests of kelp, slippery tide pool shallows, maybe something scarier than werewolves and vampires put together.

At the back of my mind, I know that Jake must have done his research, picking a spot that hangs over clear, boring ocean. All the same, I squeak with terrified delight when I see tide pools glinting at the base of a nearby cliff.

I close my eyes to block out what the waning light is telling me, then throw myself off the cliff with a shriek. The chafing air overflows my senses before surf clamps down on them hard. My capillaries shiver closed, and my core blood throbs against every inch of my insides.

I know the other Cullens can swim better than I do, faster and much more gracefully. All the same, none of them's done it in years. The bubbling cold could never make their bodies thrill like this. They detect and measure cold to the tenth of a degree, but they'll never really _know_ it without blood to clench and beat against it.

Jacob makes a deafening splash and comes up grinning hugely. We revel in the water the way only half-breeds can; Jake says a human would get instant hypothermia, and we both know the vamps would just get bored. He and Seth live right on the coast expressly so they can dive in the mornings. Seth was supposed to come with us today, but he canceled at the last minute to hang out with a human friend.

I launch myself like a dolphin and tackle Jake from behind. Stray kelp tangles our tense limbs together, and nothing is quite real besides our bodies and the salt and the wet and the cold. We tangle in a realm that has no place for humans, and no place for vampires either. There's only room for us, which is only fair since we don't fit in anywhere else.

Jake gets out of the water while I'm on the downward swing of a backflip. I spread my arms out wide and arc around 'til I surface, laughing and spluttering.

I'm about to head up the cliff when something moves at the top edge of my vision. Something slow but deliberate, out of place in this mostly empty seascape.

I slow down and turn in order to make out what it is: a small, pale woman with long black hair standing near the edge of the cliff that skirts the tide pools. With her hair flying in the wind like that, she reminds me of a flagpole, standing perfectly still with her eyes closed and her arms wrapped around her middle.

The woman looks sad, I think; very sad. Also a little familiar-I know I've seen her before, but _where_? My legs kick me forward before I can decide how I know her; also before I can decide whether I'm brave enough to come much closer.

At the sound of my leg-kick, her eyes fly open. Staring, but not staring at me. I wonder if I should say something but then she moves and I hear Jake yell.

"_Lily!_ _Fuuuck, noooo!"_ Jake yells, and I whip around without thinking. He stands, mouth agape, on the edge of our cliff, but then shakes off the paralysis and jumps as far out as he can. That's when I look to the far cliffs again and see that Lily's jumped too. Jumped, or simply fallen-it's hard to tell which- and about to hit the deadly shelf of shallows. I don't think I hear the noise she makes, not over the pounding in my ears. Suddenly, I know where I've seen her before-when Seth and Jake are at home together, she's sometimes about to leave their house.

My spinning head decides that it should swim instead of sink, so I move. I stop moving when my knees drag on rocks and Jake catches me around the middle. "_Who?" _I squeak, closing my eyes and turning away from the air that smells like blood.

"Lily is Seth's… _friend_, if you remember. They fell in love real…_suddenly_ when we moved here. Sometimes…sometimes that happens. She was already married, with a three-year-old kid. Uh, sometimes that happens too. So she and Seth've been sneaking around ever since, and the guilt's been tearing them up. It's just…you can't stay away, not from that kind of love. But I guess it all got to be too much for her."

Jake's eyes are strangled with pity and fury. Suddenly, the fury gets control of his whisper. "How could she be such an idiot? Doesn't she know what's going to happen now?"

My own head is spinning with the pity and fury too. I have no idea what Jake means, what any of this means. _I_ love Seth, but Lily's bones are poking jaggedly; her body is in pieces and I have no idea how loving Seth could _do_ that to somebody. A part of this story is missing, a part that's deadlier than the hidden tidal shallows. I just don't _get_ the type of love that seems to have death following it around all the time, and I _really_ don't get why everyone thinks that kind of love is the highlight of existence or something.

Jacob is talking to himself now. He's thinking up a plan for burying Lily in secret, convincing Seth that Lily wanted to run away from her husband. He's planning to forge love letters, hide the fact that love for Seth has _destroyed_ a _human being_.

I wish Jake wouldn't lie to Seth… if loving Nessie Cullen could break and kill a person, I think I'd want to know about it. I'd start dance-walking like a ballerina toy, make kids at school watch while I drank their pet cats, make them know I'm a monster to be feared, not loved. I wonder if love could break me, the way it somehow broke Lily, but I know love for Seth couldn't do that, not to me. I don't even think love for Bella could break me like that. But I think about the picture that I pulled from Bella's scrapbook, how Alice explained that love for Bella almost killed Edward. I don't understand, don't really believe it could happen, but when I look at the picture, I know that it must be true.

I've asked all the Cullens to tell me that story in turn, and Esme can't tell it without trembling in sadness and awe. I think awe wins, but does it win because Edward lived? Because Bella's love saved him or because love for Bella could have killed him? I don't think I'm fragile, not killable-by-love fragile, but what would it mean if I'm wrong? Trying to figure it out is making my head spin like crazy. I'm less breakable than Lily, I reason; more breakable than Edward. Jacob called her an idiot, so are you safe if you're not an idiot? Do you know if you're that kind of idiot? Could love destroy my Jacob?

I open my mouth to ask Jake one these questions. They swirl around my head, and nothing comes out, so I warm up with a less important query.

"Why didn't you tell me about her before, Jake?"

"The way Seth and Lily loved each other… it's a powerful kind of love. Powerful enough to hurt and kill people. That kind of love can be the best thing in the world, when other things don't get in the way. It's dangerous, though, Ness… I guess I don't have to tell you that now. Your parents thought you were too young to deal with that kind of love. They asked me and Seth not to have you over when Lily was around."

Jake looks down guiltily, but then his head jerks up. I look up too and I want to yell, _Seth, it's a trap!_ I still don't know why Lily is dead, not really, and I wish Seth would get somewhere safer. That's when Seth looks down a little and I get a glimpse of his eyes. And I know without knowing how I know that Seth is already dead.

I look down for the first time, away from Seth's empty eyes, and see a strand of Lily's long black hair twist gracefully around a jutting shoulder bone. Then Jake's arms are buckling under a greater weight than Lily's, and I reach out, eyes still down, to try to help him support the falling body. Our arms are full of smooth bronze skin; our skin more bruised than his post-impact. The face and hair are perfect and still, with no new blood burning the air.

The burning must have happened already somehow; Seth's eyes look like day-old fire pits. His chest skin is smooth because his heart is perfectly still. More fragile-or more noble, is it-than hearts that don't die of love.

A/N: Review and tell me what you think? I always reply and everything :)


	2. My Name is Leah

Sorry for the wait, guys… I hope you like the chapter, and that you'll let me know either way! Big thank you to Reamhar and Ichigo from Project Team Beta for helping me get this together.

I don't own anything that Stephanie made up.

* * *

_"The art of losing isn't hard to master;_

_so many things seem filled with the intent _

_to be lost that their loss is no disaster, … _

_--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture_

_I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident_

_the art of losing's not too hard to master_

_though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster."_

_-- _Elizabeth Bishop_, One Art_

* * *

_~Leah~_

The split-level house is all bland, open angles. Big, ostentatious, and really fucking generic, set smack in the middle of my favorite ocean overlook. On the door, there's a peephole and a grotesquely sparkly dreamcatcher. The more details I notice, the more generic the damn thing looks, so I settle for staring at my old, scuffed shoes.

I was already shuffling before I saw the doormat. It's fucking telling me to "wipe" my "paws." My eyebrows should be shooting into outer space right now, but honestly… that just sounds like way too much effort. My hands feel like they weigh about a million pounds apiece, and it's all I can do to lift one of them to the doorbell. A doorbell that's shaped like a tiny fucking _paw print_.

The electronic chime sends shivers up my neck. Two tones are pouring through the lit-up cavern inside, turning around to mock me from out of the third story windows. You'd think it was a bugle announcing somebody actually important. That, or a siren warning them to get ready for trouble.

There's some shuffling and squeaking, and then the front door swings open. The hinge sighs dramatically and my shoulders sink in sympathy, but somehow I force myself to open my eyes a bit. I might even have managed a little shadow of a smile. Not that I feel like smiling; I just have to get my cheek muscles warmed up somehow. They're just as inert as every other part of my body, which is kind of a problem in the talking department.

At some point, staring back at someone gets to be more effort than talking to them. That's when I manage to force out a "Hey, Sam."

I thought this house would bag any pageant in the Things That are Big and Bland category, but nope-- Sam's "Hey Leah!" just gave it a run for its money. His voice is still deep, but somehow wimpier than I remember it, with an up-and-down cadence that sounds just like his fucking doorbell.

Sam lets his mouth hang open for a minute, then shifts the kid in his arms to get a better look at me. As if either of us could have changed at all in the past six years. His shoulders still have the too-round look of melons or Mickey Mouse ears, and one chubby toddler's hand is lying in that valley above his sternum. Those muscles always look like they're about to shred his T-shirt, but not in a way that screams man-slut at you. That used to be one of my favorite things about him; the way his tense manpower just sat there under his skin, not giving a fuck whether you noticed it or not.

He looked like a fucking god whenever he stood on the cliffs in the moonlight, but honestly-- the fluorescent kitchen lights just aren't doing it for him right now. All that bulky, sinewy tension looks plain awkward next to the kiddo, like he's got all this suburban housewife angst bottled up underneath his skin.

People who didn't know Sam used to think he looked way too old. It wasn't his muscles or jawline so much as who he always hung out with. A buffed out man looks looks weird running around with barely-teenage boys, almost as weird as he looks right now, playing Mr. Mom. Somehow, the muscles make him look too young, like a varsity athlete who banged someone's stepmom and woke up saddled with kids and a kitschy doormat.

Sam starts to look less awkward when Emily appears. She rubs his back as if to soothe the strain of seeing me, and of course they go on to share a long, googly-eyed look. She's what-- twenty-seven?-- but looks at least thirty-five. Not the movie star kind of thirty-five, either.

Their eye contact ends after a second or five, and their faces assume an expression they seem to have decided upon together: solemn, naturally, with pinched mouths and wide-set eyes. I can mentally see Sam's ears and tail flatten against his fur. The buzz cut makes him look even more like Emily's whipped little stud-boy. I thought she was going to start speaking for him, but they've apparently decided that Sam should man up and do it himself.

"Leah… it's so good to see you," he stammers. He shifts the drowsy child to his other arm and back again. "It's been so long." He clears his throat loudly. "I just wish it were… you know… under better circumstances."

Good grief. You'd think he'd never had to offer me condolences before.

"Yeah, good to see you too." We'll just have to live with monotone on my end.

"I can't imagine what you and your mom are going through. First your dad, and now this…"

I clear my throat stutteringly. "About that… I'd like you not to do the howling this time, if that's okay. Mom didn't like it."

"God Leah, I'm… sorry, I guess. No, we don't have to do it, if your Mom doesn't want us to." He looks even younger now, blubbering like a boy with a bad case of stage fright. He knows I'm probably lying, but luckily he's not allowed to call me on it. He might or might not gripe to Emily, but I couldn't really care less what they do in their stupid new house.

"Great, thanks." I manage a bigger smile this time, relieved as shit that I can go now. Not that I want to go home, but anything's better than here for God's sake. "Well… I'll see ya."

They suddenly make a big show of inviting me in for a drink, now that I've given the 'I'll see ya' all-clear and am in no danger of staying. No one breathes easily until my paws leave their doorstep for good.

Sam's known for years what I thought of the noise he decided to arrange for dad's wake. The pack was like a choir trying to plink out a dirge on handbells; deep echoey handbells, sure, but they still sounded fucking childish, like the soundtrack for some indie film that's treating a death ironically. The kind of film that works hard to get you attached to a person, then kills them and trashes them until you feel like a gullible shit.

Orchestration is _not_ one of Sam's many talents, and he left the melody so full of holes that it soaked up my sobs like a sponge, debasing my grief by accident as completely as films can debase it on purpose. Way to make me feel stupid for crying at my own father's wake.

Seth blubbered and bubbled with snot that night, filling more of the melody than my sobs did. But Mom kept quiet for an hour, then two, then the whole god-awful night. Charlie told half of the town that she was in shock the whole time, and the other half of the town that she was as tough as a wolverine. The reality is that she just collapsed, collapsed like she'd finished running a couple hundred miles. Yes, as if Sue Clearwater, Le Couch Potato Extraordinaire, had run a hundred miles. She made scattered, nonsensical movements with her lips, and they all seemed to circle around the words, _It's over_. A couple of times I thought I might have heard a loaded croak, but her eyes were barely blinking, and they stayed much drier than the front of my sweater did.

I was the one who finally forced her to start crying. I hope to God she'll have the heart to return the favor tonight.

You cry a lot when something solid gets yanked out from under your ass, leaving you lurching and pawing away at your father's uprooted shadow. You also cry a lot while your brother is slipping away from you piece by piece, and you're scared to death that the next piece to go will hurt more than the last one did. But what do you do when the last piece crumbles and part of you is happy that the crumbling's all over?

After he met her, it was like some alien was sucking out Seth's brains through his dick. An alien that Mom thought was the best thing that ever happened to him. She wasn't thrilled with the adultery, sure, but hadn't she learned the hard way how imprinting conquers all? Wolf karma owed her a daughter-in-law to replace the son-in-law it took away.

Now that Seth's _gone_ gone, not just imprinted gone, Mom must be catching up on years of backlogged crying. Crying that she called vindictive and petty when I had the sense to do it long ago. Her eyes were almost swollen shut when she picked me up from the airport. In a way, I did go to Sam's for her sake; she might not have minded hearing them howl all night for dad, but that was because she wouldn't fucking _cry_ then. It hurt me to hear the wolves stealing my tune; I was his _daughter_, and I still couldn't come up with the racket they could. That, or make it so my tears were all for Dad, and not for their stupid, cheesy, self-serving melody. Mom might not be a werewolf, but at this point, the pack's still taken a hell of a lot away from her, and I really don't think she'd appreciate their taking away her chance to weep for her son in peace.

I still don't understand why Mom pulled the silent bitch act for Dad's wake. At the memory of her stoicism might help her not hate me if I can't cry properly for Seth tonight. No; hopefully that _won't_ happen. I really need her to hate me enough to _make_ me cry tonight. I don't know what I'll do to myself, otherwise.

I don't believe my baby brother is better off dead than a love zombie. I thought about telling her that anyway, just so she'd have a good reason to smack me, but who am I kidding… I could never hurt Mom like that.

I feel a little better when I pass a rough-shingled bungalow. I was afraid more Quileutes might have built Sam-and-Emily-style monstrosities, but apparently fifties kitsch isn't in style with the non-zombies yet. Quil's house still has comfortingly warped windows, and I stop to check whether the left pane has that funny corner bubble that used to look like a sunburst or a daisy.

I squint at the relevant glass sheet, and oh lord… there's my face. The muscles look like they're shot to hell with Novocain or worse, so smooth that my squint distorts them hugely. There are no ripples of anything resembling sniffing or crying, and I really, really hope that Charlie won't call me a wolverine or worse. My eyes are so dry that they aren't even very reflective; they look like corpse sockets sunk into my hopelessly dead expression.

The sight of my bitch-face almost makes me forget the daisy, but then the blistery petals catch a stray sliver of moonlight.

I used to think my daisy was the most beautiful thing in the world. I know it's just a stupid defect in someone else's window, but I loved it because it was all mine. I used to zero in on its shape every time I walked past this house, and I've never once seen anyone else give it so much as a passing glance.

The petals shimmer magically in the light of the full moon. Somehow, they're casting moonlight on the smooth flat of the glass, a depthless patch that was dark a second ago. It's not until my lashes drip that I realize where the light patch is coming from: my newly reflective eyes are gleaming juicily back at me. Soon I'm crying impossibly hard, shaking with hiccups and '_ah_'s.

I couldn't cry for Seth before because I thought I was finally done losing him; I would stop having to endure losing a piece of him every week. What I'd forgotten was that Seth is not the last thing I had to lose. I may be brotherless, fatherless, and boyfriendless at this point, but I still have a mother and that pain-in-the-ass Jacob and dozens of beautiful nothings like the daisy in Quil's window. The wolf pack hasn't taken any of these things away from me yet, but it's only a matter of time before I lose them too. I've got nothing at all to be grateful for right now, and I'd better cry for Seth before I've got something else to cry about.

Sam was the first thing the wolf pack took from me. Then it took my privacy, my hair, my _period_, and stretched my arms and legs out like silly putty. I looked like a glandular freak of a boy, but I still never heard the end of how, _God,_ I was _such_ a _girl_!

The next thing I lost was subtler, but it still hurt like a bitch. I started to notice people looking at me without ever seeing me for real. Okay, so it's not like they used to look at me harder; most people only stare long enough to decide what 'hello' to send your way. Before I changed, it was a sunny hello, the kind that meant '_I'm glad you were born, Beautiful Leah!_' I was just as happy to get the cheeky hello, the '_Sam's sure glad you were born, _eh_ Leah?_' I guess I always assumed that I deserved those hellos, and I never really cared that people thought so little before bestowing them. Later, though? You bet I cared when I was minding my own business, not moping or scowling or anything, and then someone whispers the kind of walking-on-eggshells 'hello' that really means '_Crap… if I breathe too hard, Leah might remember how Sam just dumped her unlovable ass_.'

After a few encounters with that hello, I kinda started expecting it and treating people accordingly. At least that made them change their tune to something a little more palatable, a 'hello' that meant something like '_God, I can't wait to get _away_ from that bitch-face._'

There were other kinds of greetings that I couldn't get away from, no matter how hard I tried. There was '_ 'sup, Freak of Nature?_', which was pretty okay and fair, but then there was '_Will that stupid cunt quit suing for equal opportunity employment in the vampire-slaying biz?_'

That was how they greeted me when I was trapped inside their heads, and it was so fucking unfair that I screamed and screamed until I had no fucking energy for their hypocritical code of 'thought politeness' that obviously didn't apply to how _they_ thought about _me_. The tune never changed, and it wouldn't fucking shut up until Jake gave me an _out_, thank _God_.

After I said goodbye, I hoped I'd never have to say hello again. It's a small reservation though, and I got my fair share of '_Well look who bit off more than she could chew and ran away with her tail between her legs (literally!). Have a nice life, Miss Leah the Quitter!_' It was probably the worst thing they'd silently said to me yet, but I barely cared because I was _free_. I could run all the way to Canada, run as far as the Northwest Territory and find people who didn't know enough to load their hello's with anything. Sure, they sensed I was a freak of some kind, but they didn't know what kind exactly, and sometimes I could almost forget what kind myself.

I got a job with the Forest Service, looking for a way to be just plain Leah again. Leah who you ignored if you weren't going to look at her properly. No one knew to look for the things that made me different and broken, and sometimes I could almost forget how to look for those things myself. I rediscovered parts of myself that I'd thought had been lost forever, and as long as I didn't get too close to anyone, it was easy to pretend that those parts of me joined up seamlessly. From far away I was a good, beautiful, entirely human girl again… I just wished there was some way I could stay far away myself.

For a while, I was happy enough to go several weeks without phasing. I used the phone to call Mom and Seth, and I think I even managed to be just plain Leah for them. It's hard to keep anything from someone who's been in your head before, but practice makes perfect, and Seth has always been a bit too gullible.

I can't really call him gullible for believing my act without calling myself an imbecile for believing his. In my defense, Seth had never felt like hiding much from me, not ever. It was kind of pathetic when his easy-going innocence outlasted his thirteenth birthday, but then it lasted through his change and showed every sign of going strong into his twenties. Thinking back on it now, I'm positive there's only one thing that he ever would've been afraid to tell me.

I hadn't phased for about five weeks when I saw some girls looking weirdly up at me. I was too far away for them to think I could hear them, but their chatter carried over to me loud and clear, so clear that I was apparently nowhere close to growing out of the wolf thing anytime soon.

One of the girls thought there was something different about me. I was too tall and broad shouldered and muscular and angular, and maybe I was a tranny or something. The other girls thought she was full of it, but I really couldn't care less at that point. I just dropped the machete I'd been using to clean up the trail, and ran and ran and ran. I didn't have time to take my clothes or my shoes off, but I barely noticed when they exploded around me because Seth's mind was bursting with _her_. He'd fucking _imprinted_ fucking _THREE WEEKS AGO_, and I'd had _NO IDEA_!

That's when I knew the pack had taken my brother away from me. Just like it took away everything else I cared about. Two years before it deigned to kill him outright.

The autopsy says it was a heart attack that killed him. At first, the doctors were completely incredulous-- a healthy 22-year-old doesn't randomly drop dead too often-- but then they looked at Dad's old file and nodded like they understood. Apparently the problems that killed him at thirty-eight had looked like they'd started when he was Seth's age.

I guess the heart attacks might've killed Dad a bit sooner if he'd seen a lover jump headfirst off a cliff, but sorry… that is _not_ what happened to Seth. I hate to believe in psycho tribal voodoo, but there was absolutely no getting around it this time. Even if the old legends hadn't mentioned the broken imprint penalty, just being in his mind when it wasn't his mind would've been enough to clue me in. The imprint was like those parasites that wrap themselves around someone's brain. The kind you can't remove if you want the brain to survive.

I've been crying pretty hard for a solid while now, long enough that I'm not afraid to show my face at home. I scrub at my eyes until I can actually see where I'm going, then plod down the shortest path home.

My eyes should be decently puffy now, puffy enough for Charlie to be embarrassed to look at me. I can see him through the window, reading a book at the kitchen table; I guess that means that he'd finished filling out paperwork for now. He squirms and clears his throat as I enter the kitchen-- good, I hoped the puffy eyes would do the trick.

"How you holding up kid?", he mumbles under his mustache. I respond with a wordless shrug, and his face starts drowning in sympathy. Drowning, as in the can't-breathe kind of drowning.

"How's mom?", I ask, feeling sympathy of my own at his discomfort.

"Asleep," he answers with a shrug. After a beat, he nods at a stack of inked forms, then watches me wordlessly as I sign them.

"You look tired," he offers at last, with the guilty look of a man who doesn't have any idea what to say. I guess you could get that from my bloodshot eyes, but really have no desire to toss and turn right now.

"Nah," I say, with what I hope is a casual look. "I guess… I think I need some more fresh air right now."

When I make it to the garage, I realize that I'm starving. I spent most of the last day and night trying to comfort Mom, and there hasn't been any time to really think about food. Charlie probably would've made us eat, but I think he was scared by how vulnerable Mom looked. I don't really want to think about going back into that box of airless grief, but I definitely want to steer clear of places where I might be forced to talk to someone. Poor Grieving Leah may trump Poor Jilted Leah as far as names go, but I don't have the energy to deal with either right now. Especially not from people who know me as an unstable, bitchy freak who just up and left the country at the low point in her life.

I just freaking want something to eat… _WHY IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK?_

I realize too late that I should have been trying to calm my breathing, and I barely have time to strip my clothes off before I explode mid-stride. I've fled in a pretty random direction, but luckily I manage to end up in the forest. I growl when I smell a hint of fox in the distance, forgetting how much I hate to tear live animals apart. I hate myself when I eat in this form, killing and tearing my food as cruelly as the pack has torn my own life to pieces.

Before I even knew about vampires or werewolves, I noticed a lot of orphaned fawns wandering La Push. Everyone-- correctly, as it turned out-- blamed the bearlike monsters that hikers had been noticing. Jacob and the others like to talk about now 'natural' our eating habits are, and I couldn't agree more; it's our animal nature to methodically destroy living things, be they deer families, ecosystems, or our own sorry no-longer-human lives. I haven't eaten cooked meat in seven-odd years, and I hate myself every time my wolf nose has other ideas. Deer hurts me the most… their eyes are as innocent as Seth's always were. Tearing and killing just don't make any sense to them until it's their own flesh being torn apart.

It makes me sick to see the bones we leave behind afterward. It reminds me of the way that the wolf pack has broken me from the inside out. But there's one sight that makes me sicker than bones do… when I think of it, I know where I have to go, and what I have to do.

Seth was a leech-lover, and there'll be leeches at the funeral tomorrow. They might not be able to show their faces at the ceremony, risk being seen by people who used to know them, but their barf-inducing human bait will stink up all the shadows. Their old house will be stinking like a rotting peach already, and every so often, something will flit into the woods and then flit back in without even wrinkling its designer clothes. Smug as a canary, like it expects some kind of medal for not murdering someone in cold blood.

It hurts like hell when the pack is tearing you up. Mentally, I know that better than anyone, and I even caught a physical taste when Paul ripped my thigh with his teeth. But it's still _you_ that gets to hurt like hell, and some pieces of you are left just the way they used to be. You have something to hold onto while you're hurting, and everything that's hurt is clean, gone, severed. It's so different when you see a freshly drained deer… all the skin is there, all the limbs and the tail and the other parts that a 5-year-old would know, and it's the part that's _there_ that disgusts you, not the absence of what's been ripped away.

At least if I poach on their mostly-abandoned land, I can eat without feeling too guilty. The death I deliver may be sick and barbaric, but it's a hell of a lot better than sticking around when a leech has drained all your blood.

I'm really glad that Jacob is human right now. It's bad enough to do this with someone watching from a distance, and it's far worse to have them watch from inside my mind. From inside, they can feel my muscles enjoy every coil and spring and strike; they feel me give in and become the wolf that's torn so much away from me.

When the bones are so clean that tearing gives way to cracking, I collapse the way Mom did when she got out of the car last night. I deflate with a crack, and my sharp hip and shoulder bones tangle with the skeleton of my prey. I'm no longer a beast, just an awkward, naked girl all smeared with gore like a disgustingly overgrown newborn. I gag at what I've done, what I am, and especially at the satisfaction that's keeping me from being sick right now.

The eastern sky is starting to light up, and I know I can't embrace the stripped carcass forever. I know I should phase and run home as fast as I can, but I can't stand the thought of being an animal again so soon.

I sigh with relief when I remember that I'll have to clean up first; I won't have to phase for a least a few more minutes.

I remember there's a river that runs through the Cullens' land, and I can hear it when I cock my head to listen for rushing water. I sprint toward it for a hundred feet or so, then crouch again and listen harder. My course is slightly off, so I adjust my heading and spring forward again, a little farther and faster this time. Soon I'm flying as freely and speedily as if I were a wolf-- no, _not_ as if I were a wolf! The wolf is what gives my strides that gawky, too-aggressive beginning, which I can't get rid of without losing the speed that's completely and entirely _Leah_!

It's true that I run faster now than I could before I changed, but I still count running as something the pack took away from me. I used to be a track and field champion, but the change ended my athletic career pretty damn effectively. Even if it weren't for the sports physicals and the drug tests, I'd probably have quit because undressing in the locker room embarrassed me so fucking much. More than that, since running is such a big part of being a werewolf, I can't even run on two legs anymore without feeling like an animal.

The rest of them think of my speed as my special wolfy super power-- "the only edge she has," is how Jacob put it once-- and it's like I have to thank the fucking wolf DNA for every speed rush I've gotten since the change. Adrenaline and endorphins are great and all, but my favorite thing about running was always the way it made me feel powerful, how I could amaze people and get places and make my body sing by just _wanting_ it bad enough.

If I went to the Olympic trials now, I'd beat everyone hands down-- the women _and_ the men-- but as soon as they tested my blood, they'd call me a cheater and say that none of the races mattered. I didn't win them; my fucked up blood chemistry did. Even though they'd be wrong to assume that my blood was this way on purpose, I'd be just as unworthy, just as much of a cheater, as if they were right about everything.

In spite of everything, running still feels pretty damn good, the same way that eating in my wolf form feels ridiculously good while I'm doing it. As if it weren't enough to pay for those feelings in shame and embarrassment afterward, it apparently makes me paranoid to run naked through leech land with bloodstains all over me. I keep getting the feeling that someone's following me, but since the best solution to being followed is to run as fast as I can, I have no idea who or what it is.

I have no good reason to think it's anything more than a memory ghost, and soon I'm skirting the riverbank and coming to a stop. I enter the water quickly and plunge in almost to my neck.

I rub as hard as I can at my body and face, splashing water on the short, silky fuzz of my hair. My nails are attacking the gore like a maniac, probably breaking the skin and making my own blood mingle with the deer's.

Eventually, I know that I can't delay any longer. I climb out of the river and inspect my long body, finding several healing scratches, but no evidence of deer blood.

Then I hear a noise, and my heart stops.

It's not so much one sound as three sounds on top of each other: a dry crackle, and damp rustle, and a little sigh like you hear when you step into a wind tunnel. None of the sounds is remarkable, but they all come from the same tree at the same moment.

I stay absolutely still with all of my senses trained on that spot. That's when I hear more of the fluttery little sighs. They're quieter than the one I noticed, and they keep up a quick rhythm that accelerates along with another, wetter rhythm. _A heartbeat_.

Before the heartbeat has time to falter again, I'm crouching just to the left of the offending spot. My right hand is full of thick bronze curls, and my knee presses down into a rock-hard spine. I tug the curls to the side a little, not enough for her to get a good look at me-- _ANOTHER good look at me!_-- but just enough for me to see that yes, the devil-spawn imprint child has been watching me bathe, and is now whimpering in pain as if her body weren't a million times tougher than mine is.

I don't know how much leech-strength her daddy managed to give her, but it should definitely be enough for her to resist me a _little_. But her petrified eyes don't even seem to see me, and her whole body is shaking like she thinks I'm going to suck her blood, and she has no idea what to do about it.

We crouch motionless for a few more seconds, and her vacant brown eyes gradually start to look like someone's home. Her eyelids stretch until I can see white at the tops and bottoms of her weirdly normal-looking irises. She still isn't struggling… instead, she purses her slack lips and starts to give me this _look_.

Ever since Sam imprinted, I've been so damned self-conscious of the way people look at me, even in an off-hand way, and it got so much worse when I joined the pack myself and got this constant stream of data matching looks to jeering name-calling. This look she's giving me is anything but off-hand, and yet I can't figure out what in hell the devil-spawn thinks she means by it. She looks more confused than anything else… I guess she probably doesn't even know that my name is Leah. I left Forks when she was a baby, and probably no one bothered to tell her that Seth had a bitch for an older sister. Then again, she must've known _something_ about me, something that made her decide to follow and _stare_ at me like that. One way or another I _will_ find out what god-awful name they've told her to call me.

We stare at each other for a beat longer, completely and utterly confused. Then her right arm twitches from where my left hand has pinned it to her back. Since she hasn't been resisting me, my hold is pretty haphazard, and her sudden movement frees the arm completely. Before I know it, her palm is inches from my face, and I suddenly remember that touching someone's face has something to do with a freaky gift she has. That and… _Shit! her father can read minds!_

I explode almost on top of her, and she cries out in terror. A few of my claws tear big slashes in her clothes, but her hard, sparkly skin looks undamaged underneath. I wheel around and run toward the border as fast as I possibly can, but all I can see is her panicked expression. Both little hands are pressed to her open mouth, and her whole body is shaking. I shouldn't have been that close when I phased, but what's her problem, anyway? I'm sure she's seen Jacob phase a million times before this.

Of course… she might've seen _Jacob_ phase-- hell, she's probably seen every werewolf in this _town_ phase-- but she's never heard of a _woman_ who can do that. So… that look she gave me was just a cryptic new version of Leah the Freak of Nature. I'll have to remember that one. Well, if she was so repulsed by my misshapen naked body, it's a damn good thing I phased before she could get her little leech-hands on my mind. My mind is far more broken than my body, and I'm sure she'll get told that a million times over when she runs off to tell Mommy and Daddy about the dog woman.

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Now that I'm super-depressed from writing this, pleeeease cheer me up with a review. Even constructive accounts of my suckiness would cheer me up right now… guess that means I've spent a bit too long in Leah's head :-p


	3. Happy Families

A/N: I still don't own Nessie or Leah or any of the surrounding Twi-loveliness. That being said, I was so so heartened by the Leah love I got last chapter. I wasn't at all sure that anyone would like how prickly she is, and your support gave me the courage to write from her POV again. It was the best way to start clueing you in on what's up with Nessie, given that Nessie is so completely confused about the world.

Thank you so much to everyone who's giving my story a chance! Your reviews, alerts, and faves mean a lot to me 3

Big thanks also to Secretly Severus and Flibbertigibbet for beta reading this chapter!

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_"He did not know that his mode of behavior in relation to Kitty had a definite character, and that it is courting young girls with no intention of marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men such as he was. It seemed to him that he was the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery."_ -- Leo Tolstoy, _Anna Karenina_

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_~Leah~_

I somehow had the foresight to pull the blanket over my head last night. The move bought me an extra hour of sleep, maybe two, but it was only a matter of time before my wolf ears picked up some racket. It had to have been a legit racket too; I may hear as well as any leech ever has, but freak senses teach you a bit about tuning out background noise.

It wasn't the clatters or sizzles that woke me so much as the spaces between them, the silent I'm-sorry-for-disturbing-you's that only make noises seem louder. Whoever's making breakfast can't be up to any good; they wouldn't sound so goddamn timid if they were only trying to be nice.

There _is_ one major plus to being the object of other people's pity: you get freaking good at clearing a room whenever you want to. Wherever I am, whoever I'm with; they're gone if I so much as squint at them funny. Should be a piece of cake to get them out of my own house… too bad there's no way to do it without dragging my ass out of bed.

I reach for the clothes that I've stuffed under my pillow. I used to hate being naked in the cold, and old habits die hard.

Getting dressed in bed is easy, now that I don't have to avoid making drafts. Not when my body runs a steady 108. This time though, I rumple the blankets and break out in hives of goosebumps. _Fuck. Vampire stink!_

I burst into the kitchen still in sleep sweats and my wife beater. Fuck if I'll change to make _them_ feel welcome!

Definitely the worst kind of not-us _them_; also the kind of coupled _them_ that brings to mind Siamese twins. _Incestuous_ Siamese twins. Sparkly, blissed-out Bella and Edward, here to kiss grieving ass.

I guess I should see what the hell they think they're doing here. Probably the fastest way to get them right back out. Right after I deal with something actually important.

I quickly brush past the talking potpourri, heading straight for the chair by the window. As soon as I get close enough, I reach out to rub Mom's back. She's paying no attention to the breakfast or to the company, focusing all her attention on the onions that sprout along the windowsill. Her body echoes their young but shriveled slant, seeking the light with a rigid desperation.

It's not like the leeches would know when Mom is really hurting. She isn't showy or cliche about it, and she hates to seem weak in front of strangers. Seriously though…Charlie? Shouldn't he have learned a thing or two from everything they've been through together?

I shoot them all a blanket glare before embracing Mom, burying my face in her hair so I won't have to think about anything else. I wish leaving La Push hadn't meant leaving home.

I know the worst is over when Mom rests her cheek on my shoulder. Too bad Psychic Vamp knows it too, the minute it occurs to me, taking it as an all clear to interrupt our moment. You'd think that reading minds would make it freaking easy to have manners.

"Don't be angry with Charlie, Leah. It was our decision to presume that we could be of use this morning."

Pompous, intrusive asshole of a mind-reading vampire. And yes, I meant for you to hear that, dickhead.

Mom feels a lot more relaxed now--why on Earth couldn't Charlie see that she needed a goddamn hug?!--so I guess I'd better face the leech music.

Psychic Boy is pinching the bridge of his slightly turned up nose, wincing like my language just blew a mental circuit. Bella is rubbing his back like he's just been mortally wounded. Sheesh; I didn't even call him a dickhead out loud. Doesn't he hear that stuff on a minutely basis from Blondie?

"Not in so many words, but I suppose that's fairly accurate." He pauses to make a show of remembering his manners, letting the others in on our oh-so-awesome conversation. "Leah correctly guessed that Rose finds my abilities as--er--_tiresome_ as she herself does. In truth, Rose is not the only member of the family who chafes at what I can do."

Hmm… no beating around the bush about Eddie and his magic. I wondered how long Charlie could keep up that ridiculous see-no-evil-hear-no-evil routine. I guess I remember Mom saying that she'd nudged the Cullens along in that regard. As if the vamp police would ever find out about Charlie learning what the hell is up with his grandchild.

Huh. I barely thought-mention Devil Spawn, and Eddie Boy looks pained again. Wasn't even trying to fuck with him that time. "Indeed. Compared to my daughter's opinion of my talent, Rosalie's is downright moderate." He sighs almost softly enough to make me feel bad for him. "I suppose it's natural for a child to wish she could grow up a little more privately." He clears his throat--hasn't anyone told them how fake that shit sounds, since they don't even remember what throat mucus feels like?--and continues. "The truth is, that in addition to offering our heartfelt condolences, we wanted to have a quick word about Nessie."

I snort and cross my gangly arms. "Thanks for clearing up the whole deal with the pancakes. Some of us can't read minds, y'know, and need a little help in the what-do-the-leeches-want department." No reason Bella should be deprived of my wit and charm, when it's been doing such wonders with her darling husband's mood.

Her eyes bug out like my unfriendliness is some big shock. "Leah…God, I'm--" She hides her face behind Eddie Boy's shoulder, shielding an impossible blush. "We saw what happened and we didn't think; we just came 'cause we wanted to help; that's all. It's the only reason we're in Forks; honest. It's just that things are complicated with Nessie being near Quileute land…we want to fill you in on some things so no one gets hurt while we're here."

Oh, right. I almost forgot. Jake's mind is tied up in knots with this shit, going over Devil Spawn's every hug with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. He's got her on slow-mode replay every freaking time I phase, analyzing some "hey" or "luv ya!" like it's a horoscope from Cosmo. All because of a fucked up promise the leeches forced him to make. Better cut to the chase, Eddie Boy, before I beat you to the punch. It's only a matter of time before I think of a bad enough word…

He listens to me for once, drawing breath without further ado. "Nessie has not yet decided on the nature of her feelings for Jacob. She cares for him deeply, as do we all, but she is still in the process of discovering what their relationship could mean to her. It is for both their sakes that we ask for your help in shielding her, for now. She is still too young, emotionally, to grasp ordinary romantic love, much less irrevocable, supernatural love."

My eyes dart wildly from one leech to the other, not quite believing that anyone could _be_ so self-centered. "So let me get this straight. Devil Spawn thinks that Jake is a random old friend of the family. That he hangs with you and moved to California 'cause he _loves_ being treated like Nessie's gay best friend. That she's free to marry whomever she wants, and Jake'll think that's perfectly fine and dandy."

"Leah, I understand that you must be upset right now." His tone is more accusatory than concerned, and he grips Bella's knee like a lifeline. "Even so, I would appreciate it if you would speak to my wife with more respect." As if my disrespect weren't meant for the both of them, equal-like. "We realize that infant imprinting is something your people have learned to take in stride. But we also understand that Jacob will sense our daughter's maturing desires, that he is better equipped than other men to perceive and become what she needs. Given these… advantages, we believe it is important for our daughter to be able to choose her mate freely. As freely as possible, at any rate." He rubs the bridge of his nose again, a nose that I am fighting very hard not to break. "A marriage motivated by guilt and obligation would not be fair to either Renesmee or to Jacob."

"Yeah, I'm sure you'd lose a lot of sleep over being unfair to Jake, except… whoops! Leeches can't sleep anyway; guess you're off the hook. Especially if you buy him a present or fifty." Last time I checked, he owned three or four motorcycles, not to mention the sick cars and the three story house by the sea. Seth had a damn sweet deal while it lasted, happily mooching off of some pretty insane guilt offerings.

Edward does this little patient jaw clench, like he's too fucking noble to say what he's thinking. "Charlie and Sue are aware of our wish that Nessie not know about the imprint, that she not spend enough time in the Quileute community to guess that such a thing might exist. They have never shown anything but support for our decision."

I shoot Mom a look of angry disbelief. How on Earth had they gotten her to go along with this?

This time she beats Edward to answering my unspoken question. "Sweetheart, nothing good ever comes of it when a person feels obligated to love someone else."

_Christ_, no. They are _not_ getting off the hook that easily. "Huh… I guess our ancestors should have thought of that before they went all hairy on us."

I stride smoothly forward until I'm knee to knee with Psychic Leech, taking advantage of his seated posture to make him forget that I'm the shortest of the wolves. I've actually got an inch on him, any way you slice it.

"_Poor Edward_. And Esme, and Emmett, and _Rosalie_. Carlisle never _asked_ you if you wanted to join his leech collection. You feel just _awful_ about every wittle manslaughter, but in the end… whatever. Totally not your fault."

I step toward him again, until my pointy braless nipples are mere inches from his nose. You might imagine him squirming, like I've done something gauche, but Eddie Boy is much too scared to squirm an inch right now. My wolf body is strictly an intimidation device. He and his wife wear identical looks of rigid, blanched confusion, despite the fact that Eddie knows exactly where I'm going with this.

"It's fucking rich that a bunch of monsters act like innocent victims all the time. You didn't ask to become monsters, so you forgive yourselves for 'slip-ups.' You feel bad, but not bad enough to end to your sorry selves." I let that sink in a bit, then move on to my point. "And you'd rather see Jacob _die_ than see your brat lose a minute of sleep over him. Over her fucking _free choice_. And ethics are on your side, since the imprinting wasn't her fault."

Edward squeezes Bella's hand, then stands up to look me in the eye. With a low growl in the back of his throat and just a hint of a chin raise. About fucking time… I couldn't have taken much more of his calmer than thou bullshit.

"Say what you will about me or my siblings, Leah, but my daughter and my wife have never killed a soul between them. Whatever your problems with my family as a whole, some of us are entirely innocent."

"Whatever your problems with my _tribe_ as a whole, Jake is as innocent as anybody on this planet! He didn't fucking ask to be the Devil Spawn's whipped maidservant. People are supposed to teach their kids that actions have fucking consequences: Devil Spawn betrays Wolf Boy and Wolf Boy drops dead. When you gave her a "choice" about what to have for dinner, you didn't forget to mention that certain "choices" are better than others."

Bella lets out a pathetic little sob, burying her face in her hands. Hiding the fact that she can't even shed one tear for her old 'best friend.' Edward sits down again to take her in his arms, glaring daggers at me all the while.

"Shh, my love, everything's going to be fine." He starts in on me again, more forcefully this time. "There has never been any doubt as to where our daughter's heart lies. We only wanted to remind Sue and Charlie that she's still very much a child, emotionally, if not physically. There is no reason, as of yet, to burden her with any discussion of her future romantic life. I daresay that once she matures in that way, the issue of her right to choose Jacob or not will be completely beside the point."

"You "daresay" my ass! You've been inside Jake's head just as goddamn often as I have. He's worried sick 'cause he doesn't feel like he _knows_ how to be what she wants! No other imprinted wolf in the pack feels that kind of insecurity. Claire is only fucking nine years old, and in Quil's head they're just as good as married with children!"

This is news to Bella, apparently. Stupid secret-keeping Psychic Leech. Apparently she feels the same way for now; her too-big eyes are pretty clearly telling him off. I don't know why she's so pissed, come to think of it. Apparently she's okay with keeping big things from Devil Spawn.

"No offense intended, Leah, but werewolves aren't known for their humility. If it weren't for the fact that Jacob Black was once quite unlucky in love, I'm sure he'd be just as cocky as Quil is."

Edward's explanation seems to be good enough for Bella, but there's no way in hell that he should believe it himself. Not when he's been in Jake's mind…and in his daughter's, for that matter. He knows how they differ from Quil and Seth and every last one of La Push's paired-off zombies. They're all equally brainwashed, but it's like Jake hangs on for dear life while the rest of them feel completely in control, like love is the one thing on this Earth they trust completely.

Seth stopped feeling in control near the end. He never lost faith that she loved him, but he could tell that it wasn't enough. Not even the truest love can make up for betraying your child, not in Lily's mind, anyway.

I'm about to call Edward on his huge crock of bull when Charlie gets up and clears his throat.

"Leah, honey--I'm sorry I wasn't better at getting your Mom some peace and quiet. I thought, you know, it might help her to see old friends, but…" He gives his daughter a scolding look, and his son-in-law a scowl. "I don't think the two of you should be fighting this out in here. Leah and Sue don't need to be borrowing anyone else's trouble right now."

Charlie looks faintly sick to his stomach. I wonder how much of this mess they've bothered to let him in on. He can't be thrilled with his granddaughter being betrothed like a mail-order bride, but then again, he loves Jake like family. Maybe even like a son. Hell, it's not like I think Devil Spawn _deserves_ any of it; it's just that the whole mess is no more Jake's fault than hers. I can't let Jake be treated like some unworthy lecher who deserves to die for what he is.

Edward looks like he's about to argue with Charlie, but then a phone buzzes in his pocket. One short, shrill conversation later, he's ushering Bella out the door.

About. Fucking. Time.

I stay in the kitchen long enough to clean up and see how Mom's doing. I don't have the heart to tell Charlie off for letting her face the leeches, especially when he apologized in front of Edward all on his own. I think he's starting to pick up on the fact that Mom needs more hugs than she's actually willing to ask for.

The neighbors have brought over a ridiculous amount of food; dishes and dishes of fancy signature casseroles. They're stacked up precariously at the back of the freezer, as perfectly neglected as the French toast in front of her. What the hell are they all thinking, trying to feed her that rich crap? It was at least a month after Dad died before she even wanted butter on her bread.

Charlie is mortified when I point out the bare bread shelf. There's no real need for him to feel too bad about this one; it must have been pretty well-stocked before the gourmet undead got hold of it. He wanted to go buy more himself, but the house reeks of leech perfume and I kind of think I'll kill something if I don't get out of here _now_.

I make an awkward exit with a shopping bag over my shoulder, ducking my head under the door frame and squinting my eyes against the sudden blast of sunlight. My plane got in last night just as the stars were starting to come out, and I haven't been out in the sun for real in more than 24 hours.

It's not like I'm any kind of stranger to the sunlight--not at this end of a summer in Canada--but the colors and shapes are all starting to overwhelm me, forcing me to cope with too much too soon. Up north, people said we lived in the middle of a natural monoculture, thousands of square miles covered with the same few fir and spruce species. Here, a lot of the space is carved up into house plots and gardens, each garden choked up with plants that really have nothing to do with each other. A planter to my left is overflowing with spiky purple leaves, and a yew tree two houses over is bristling with spots of fire engine red. Flowers like veined, pink monkey hands are reaching up to Quil's front window, and a flash of feathery bronzy stuff is peeking around the corner of their house. Maybe that yew tree would have calmed me a few months ago, before those kitschy red berries started--_Wait a second. There's no way that that _bronze_ color comes from _any_ kind of plant._

Sure enough, it's Devil Spawn doing what she apparently does best. Fucking spying through the big side window without even bothering to hide! It's almost enough to make me stop being embarrassed that she saw me in wolf mode last night. Almost, but not quite. The clincher is the fucking ridiculous getup she's got on; there's no way I can be embarrassed in front of a chick who's dressed like _that_. I thought leeches were supposed to have good fashion sense or something.

She's wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket over the girliest top I've ever seen in my life, pale green gauzy stuff with gathers under her breasts. Her khaki skirt has one of those trendy asymmetrical hemlines, and I guess the outfit would look alright if she'd lose the fucking _biker's_ jacket. It wouldn't be so bad if the jacket looked big enough to be her boyfriend's, but if anything it's a little too short and tight across her shoulders.

There must be someone inside, or she wouldn't look so interested. I'd better stick around to see the look on her face when they catch her. Funny…I knew that all the leeches were pretty socially inept, but I kinda thought they were smart enough to know you can see outside through glass.

I sneak a peak through the front window, and then it all makes sense. Quil and Claire are sitting on the floor playing Candy Land together--honestly, Candy Land for a girl who's going to be _ten_ in a few months?--and I don't think anything quieter than a small nuclear bomb could make them notice the outside world right now. If I want to have my fun I'd better startle the creepster myself.

I stare at her for another minute or two, trying to come up with a good plan of action. I'm surprised at how little about this girl I actually recognize. Sure, she was a babe in arms the last time I saw her in the flesh, but half the time I phase I see her written all over Jake's mind. Something he _thinks_ is her, anyway.

I recognize the boobs that are bigger than her mom's, the peppy spirals of hair that look like they bounced straight off a commercial set, the modelicious legs that go all the way up to Canada, but none of it quite adds up to the girl I see in front of me. It's like how you look at Emily through Sam's eyes and you'd never know she had scars.

The Devil Spawn in Jake's mind doesn't really have to move-- she just kinda floats there like an angel or a mermaid. It keeps you from noticing how awkwardly she stands, like the girls on America's Next Top Model who get destroyed by the runway walk challenge. Heh…watching those losers teeter around was the only thing that got me through Emily's godawful slumber parties.

Devil Spawn's round eyes look way too young for her face. I wonder why Jake's never noticed _that_, at least. I thought Bambi eyes were supposed to make you hot stuff, and the Devil Spawn in Jake's mind is nothing if not hot stuff.

She's reaching into her pocket now and pulling something out. Good lord, she's running around with a biker jacket and _cigarettes_?

I feel pretty stupid that I've stood here like a stalker for so long, but watching her try to get the cigarette lit is like watching a gawk-worthy train wreck.

She finally succeeds, and tilts her chin up expectantly. Then she takes a drag like she's sucking on a goddamn pixie stick. That's it. Silent stalking has suddenly lost all its appeal.

"Y'know, it's hard to look sexy doing that if it can't even give you cancer."

I get a pretty good startle reflex out of her bouncy hairdo, but it's harder to tell what the rest of her is thinking. It's hard to see past her pretty ridiculous lack of embarrassment, and her chin is jutting defiantly like _I'm _the one who has a problem here.

"I'm not trying to be sexy. I like the way it tastes."

"I might've believed that one if it weren't for the fucking biker jacket." My potty mouth sends a ridiculous shiver of excitement through her, and she fucking looks over her shoulder like her daddy's going to spank her for listening. Speaking of which, I now have a pretty good idea of what got the leeches out of my house just now. "So, your parents know you're out here? Spying on your grandpa's neighbors and poisoning a nine-year-old with secondhand smoke?"

Her answering chin jut is a pretty clear no.

"I came here with my friend. She's going to take me home when she finishes doing some work before lunch."

A friend? Wonder how she swung that one. Especially when she doesn't seem to be allowed to make friends on the Res.

"So your 'friend' brought you here so you could spy on your grandpa's neighbors?"

"I'm _not_ spying. I was curious."

"And here I thought leeches all had fucking big vocabularies."

It certainly looks that way, judging by the size of the book by her feet. I squint at the spine, trying to make out the title. It's--_are you fucking kidding me?_

"_You're reading Anna Karenina?_"

She shies away as if I've slapped her, gouging me with the full force of the fucking Bambi eyes. I can't honestly tell if she has a goddamn clue what upset me.

"My aunt Alice gave it to me when we got here."

"So my little brother kills himself over some stupid bitch, and the leeches want you to read a book about how dying for love is some beautiful symbolic shit?"

I know I've made a mistake when her lips start trembling. Whatever the rest of them can do to get their way, this girl is definitely too awkward to cry on purpose. I feel like I should hold her or comfort her or something, but her tears have a sickly sweet scent like rosewater, and I'm not sure I want that shit near my skin.

"I don't know what to _do_ if I can't read books about stuff like that. I'm not even seven years old, but I look like a grownup now--" Hmm, if she says so. "--old enough for people to expect me to understand things. My parents don't let me go anywhere or meet anybody. When I saw what happened on the beach--" She sniffs loudly, and tries to plow on. "It was the worst…the most horrible…I wanted to know…But I can't even stand to get near that part of the book yet." She lets herself cry frantically for a few long seconds, but seems to get control of herself when she stops trying to tell me what she saw. Good thing too; I'm not sure I could've held myself together if she'd tried.

"Actually," she offers in a suddenly too-cheerful voice, "I couldn't get past the first page 'cause of what Tolstoy's saying about families. He says that unhappy families are all different, but that happy families are all the same, and well… I always thought my family was happy, but I've never read about one that's anything like us. And I've never met another family in real life, ever, so I got here and just started looking through all the windows. And--" She pauses to smile so radiantly that she has to close her eyes. "Look! They're like me and my Jacob. I've never read about anyone who loves each other the way we do. Just the way my parents and aunts and uncles love each other. Plus people like me and Bella and Charlie." Telling me all this has brought a puzzled look to her face, but most of it goes away when she looks back toward the window.

She presses her nose almost to the glass again, her index finger circling and caressing my little daisy. There are still glistening trails of tears staining her cheeks, but her expression is so peaceful that I'd swear she's forgotten all about them. Usually, Quil and Claire confuse everybody who looks at them; even tribal elders who know the old stories don't know quite what to make of the way they love each other.

Nessie is looking at Quil and Claire like they're the only thing that's ever made sense to her in her life. For a second, I wonder if I was stupid to worry about Jake. But then I remember how confused she looked when she mentioned the rest of her family. I don't give a fuck if she _is_ technically six years old; there's no way in hell she should still be stuck in underage imprint mode.

I know I've got the perfect chance to tell her what imprinting is. Her mommy and daddy aren't here to shield her poor innocent ears, and we're right here in front of a visual aid she already digs. But somehow I feel as tongue-tied as I felt before I started talking to her, and I can't for the life of me figure out how to say what I need to say. It feels like I'm watching a train wreck again, only this time my best friend is about to crash and die, the best friend who pulled me up from the lowest point of my life.

I owe Jake everything for getting me out of Sam's head, and he really should be the only thing I'm thinking about right now. I owe it to him to tell this little freak that what she's doing is wrong, even if that means taking away the one thing she thinks she understands. I stand by the window for a good five minutes trying to figure out how to do it.

At some point I think about Charlie and move to sprint all the way to the grocery store, picking up speed every time I'm tempted to see if she cares.

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A/N: Don't worry; a Nessie POV is coming right up! Reviews will get a teaser, possibly containing a glimpse of Nessie's mysterious new friend. Plus, they make me feel happy and stuff :)


	4. Love and Friendship

A/N: I'm really sorry for the update fail, guys. There was an unfortunate cascade of real life, travel, and wanting to make the words nicer for y'all.

I blame part of the delay on this genetics conference I was at. The good news is that I kept thinking of ideas for this story whenever a talk got boring. A couple of times, I was doing that, and then the speaker randomly mentioned "maternal imprinting" :-p First I was like, eww, and then I felt like I'd been caught red-handed. Anyway, the next chapter is well underway, and should break the unfortunate pattern of my slowness.

So a lot happened to Nessie while we were in Leah's head, and I wanted to give you a taste of how she reacted. Hope you enjoy!

Still don't own any of the obvious non-ownable things. And you should all thank Reamhar and SecretlySeverus for betaing some comprehensibility into this thing!

* * *

_"Cadmus's grandson, free of his share of the labor, strays with aimless steps through the strange wood, and enters the sacred grove. So the fates would have it. As soon as he reaches the cave mouth dampened by the fountain, the naked nymphs, seeing a man's face, beat at their breasts and filling the whole wood with their sudden outcry, crowd round Diana to hide her with their bodies. But the goddess stood head and shoulders above all the others. Diana's face, seen there, while she herself was naked, was the color of clouds stained by the opposing shafts of sun, or Aurora's brightness….They say Diana the Quiver-bearer's anger was not appeased, until his life had ended in innumerable wounds."--Ovid, _Metamorphoses, Bk III: 165--252.

* * *

_~Renesmee~_

The salt-battered rocks dig uselessly into my knees. Irregular and annoying, but not the least bit painful. I draw my palm along the jagged pool's edge, and the movement is equally useless: the gritty salt that comes away stays wholly removed from my blood, clinging to the wrong side of my indifferently sparkling skin.

I rub hard and fast at my angrily burning eyes, adding the injury of salt to the lingering itch of tears. I cry out, startled, when the chemical burn finally hurts me.

My hands gain courage once my vision clouds up completely, seeking out the more broken of the two bodies before me. En route to another unseeing pair of eyes, they brush several splinters of bone. Lily doesn't react to the salt or the pressure, so I bear down hard with all the mental force I can summon, trying to reach some lingering scrap of her sentience. I flood her with pictures of what she has done: her splayed, broken body, a gaping hole torn in a wolf pack, and the ultimate emptiness of the look in Seth's eyes.

Her violent dying twitches might be a sign that she understands.

My numbing mind keeps looping through the apparent facts of what happened, sending the lovers back up the cliff like amiable moving pictures. Every time they come down again, I scour the image for cracks, willing it to come from a quaint, old movie with lazy special effects. Not even a magician's rabbit can 'vanish' really and truly, and losing Seth in an empty puff is so much more unlikely.

I've never been much good at exposing artistic trickery, pouncing on hints of bluescreen that pepper threadbare action scenes. I rely on Emmett's finger tease apart the real novelty from the fake, later bugging Rose or Jake to tell me how much he's made up.

I suddenly remember that I'm not alone on the beach, and press my salty hand to Jake's cheek greedily.

I assume, when he recoils, that he's reacting to the gritty residue, but then he does something he's never done before, prying away my fingers and gently fisting my hand. His face is sad, but not at all confused, like he understands everything about what just happened and can't bear to see a single second replayed.

As soon as we get home, I dive into Mama's waiting arms, forgetting my vow to call her "Bella" and treat her like the sister that she appears to be physically. She hugs me hungrily; pleased by my forgetfulness, but shies from my outstretched hand the same way Jacob did. My own hurt crashes down on me then, followed by a brush of guilt.

I'd been a little excited, it seems, by the idea of knowing something important, of being a firsthand witness to something too horrible for my family to imagine. By all rights, my gift should make me the world's most talented storyteller, but the problem is that I've never before had any stories to tell. I was an insensitive fool to expect that things would be any different this time; I may be the only Cullen who physically saw what happened on the beach, but it seems I'm still the only Cullen who doesn't understand it.

Mama looks somewhat guilty too when she stops me from touching her face. Her mournful eyes avoid mine, seeking out Daddy's over my shoulder. Their gaze heats up to a sweet and sour burn; a burn that means they're thinking about the time he went to Italy to die.

I pull away from my mother and wrap my arms around my middle. Seth, in my mind, has stopped cycling over the cliff edge, and his killer is no longer some mere insubstantial specter. The air is thick with the kind of love that destroyed him, a love that my parents are both shamelessly projecting. Mourning Seth and pledging allegiance to his killer, all in the same unnecessary breath.

I wait for Daddy to contradict what I'm thinking, hoping that he'll do so even if I happen to be right. I usually hate the way he soft-pedals the truth for me, but right now I'd give anything for some kind of clean, supernatural explanation. A lie that separates what happened to Seth from anything that could happen to my parents. But Daddy only whispers an apology with his eyes, pressing my head to his shoulder without venturing to speak.

I pull away, repelled and scared. If falling in love makes that kind of death seem any shade of sensible, then I hope to God I never fall in love.

My silent declaration is enough to make Daddy release me, holding me at arm's length and contorting his uncreaseable brow. He looks like he might be trying to figure out what to say. After several seconds, he settles for a Charlie-esque gesture, tucking a curl behind my ear without a single word.

"Edward, what is it?" Mama croons in his ear, looking as worried for me as for Daddy. Neither his smile nor his "Nothing, darling" is enough to fool either of us.

I feel a little smug at the thought that Mama understands less than I do right now; I may not know everything about what's bothering Daddy so much, but it can't feel good to hear your daughter is afraid to fall in love.

I urgently need to escape the house, which has just begun to smell like vampire breath again. To me, it has a medieval scent of heavily perfumed body odor. My nausea disperses in the fresh breeze outside, but I find myself seeking out a still-unscented enclosure. The little cottage across the river, where life had once felt so perfect.

I pay no attention to my once-beloved bedroom, but head straight for the worn, slim volume displayed on the mantlepiece. _The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie, of Romeo and Juliet_: First Quarto edition. The priciest in a long line of over-the-top anniversary gifts.

I remember Mama's thank-you shudder, and the commensurate shudder that racked me straightaway. Hers a reaction to Daddy's extravagance; mine a reaction to the thank you sex that would follow. Funny that neither of us shuddered at the play's actual content, at the horror of calling a bloodbath 'excellent' and wrapping it up to celebrate love.

The play tops the mantlepiece like a battered angel of death, seeming to cast a shadow over the whole of my parents' first house. I start to feel nauseated, despite being surrounded by the delicious scent of books.

Tucking the quarto under my arm, I trudge back toward the house. Maybe another reading will make the whole thing less grotesque.

En route to the house, I make a left and head for the garage. I always hang out there when I'm feeling lost or broken. Nothing feels more soothing than watching Jake put an engine back together; the way he coaxes little parts into place leaves me feeling put-together too. Even today, with Jake away in La Push, I feel steadied by the slightly anesthetic scent of gas. Nothing about the smell bothers to draw the humans in…even when they're ripping the planet apart with oil drills, they don't write poetry about the stuff they're seeking. Not like the love-gasoline that drenched Romeo and Juliet.

I sit down at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the house. Several close-eyed deep breaths later, I'm ready to open the play. Except…why on earth would Shakespeare waste is gift on a topic like that? I used to think the topic was silly and unworthy, but now it seems so…_criminal. _How many people have ruined themselves for love after reading this play and believing in it? If Mama and Daddy hadn't been reading it for school, would they have come that close to _dying_ for each other? Well yeah, probably, but still. What if it hadn't been Mama's favorite all along?

I remember when Daddy gave me _Crime and Punishment_ to read, a move that had inspired lots of Rose and Emmett eye-rolling. Daddy said that after it was published, a real student murdered a pawn broker, reenacting the murder exactly like it happens in the book. He wheedled me into reading _The Brothers Karamazov_ next, saying it wasn't right to read one book without the other. Apparently _Brothers K._ was a penance book for Dostoevsky, a place for him to explore how guilty he was for inspiring a murder with his other book. That was one death, balanced against the thousands that Shakespeare has probably caused. Words like that could make just about anything sound cool, and who would even _think_ of dying for love without having read them? It's so…so _pointless_ and _random_. Not to mention broken and gory if you don't have a bottle of poison on you. Or the kind of body that has to go up in perfumed smoke.

I jump when a clear soprano rings down from the top of the stairs. "Drop the book, Nessie! And not in that sticky old oil stain, please." Alice is standing with her hands on her hips, looking mildly put out.

I'm so surprised that I do what she asks. My now-relaxed hands feel cramped and strange. Like I was _this close_ to ripping the priceless quarto in two.

"What gives, Alice? I thought you couldn't see me."

"I can't see _you_, silly, but I can see your mom and dad trying to decide what to do to you." She shrugs, dancing carelessly to the floor. "Just thought I'd save them the trouble, y'know. All their little 'compromises' can kind of take forever. "

Alice bends over to pick up the quarto, scoring the slightly rumpled cover back into place. "You know this play upsets you. And it's so dark and smelly in here! I honestly thought you'd escaped inheriting your father's flair for the dramatic."

I shrug. "Dramatic stuff kind of happened, and I just…don't get it."

"It's not the kind of thing that you ever really 'get,' Nessie."

Alice is too honest to claim that I'm full of it this time. She settles for snuggling up to my side, and I let myself relax into her silky stone embrace. We sit for a few minutes without talking or moving, and then I feel icy hands hands whisper against my neck, combing through the weighted-down curls that always snarl together there. Normally I'd have squirmed or shrieked in protest, but today I wouldn't dare; I need Alice too much to chafe at the idea of being her Barbie.

After she drags her fingers down to the ringlets at my waist, Alice collects all of my hair into one tiny hand, moving to sweep it over my shoulder. Suddenly, she stiffens up, clenching at me like she's somehow lost her balance. Alarmed, I twist around in her arms and see her looking toward a dusty corner of the garage, eyeing a sheet-covered object with two wheels peeking out from underneath. Bella's motorcycle; a relict from a time that no one seems to remember too fondly.

I try to swallow, but my mouth is too dry. I probably need to hunt. "I know that you're all really sad, and you wish things had happened differently with Seth and Lily, but still…I feel like what happened is such a big part of the way you all love each other. Like, even when times are good, being in love is about being ready to die together like that. I just don't think I'll ever understand. To me, it's like watching the sun rise in the west, or something." I look down at my knees, biting my lip and pinning my hands beneath my thighs.

Stone fingers lift my chin, and golden eyes bore into mine. "Nessie, there's so much more to love than being willing to die for each other. Your parents are slowly but surely figuring that out. They've spent so little time in love, compared to the rest of us…much more time than Shakespeare ever got, though."

She swings her legs as if it slow motion, furrowing her delicate brow, then straightens up in the blink of an eye when she makes some kind of decision. "Want to go to the bookstore? We can get you a tragic love story that's _so_ not your mother's favorite." She pauses for a second, swinging her legs again. "_Anna Karenina_, I think."

"It won't be all about guilt and stuff, will it? Not like _Crime and Punishment_?"

Alice wrinkles her nose. "As _if_. I'll get my purse and jacket, and then we'll--"

Her body suddenly tenses, a familiar blankness overtaking her. The vision is fairly short, but it appears to change her mind about something, and she looks at me apologetically.

"We can't go this evening, unfortunately. There's someone working there who knows me, and we're trying to keep a low profile. We could _probably_ still pass for the ages we're supposed to be--maybe not Carlisle, but everyone who was posing as kids--still, no need to start gossip. I'll take you tomorrow morning. It's late anyway; you should go get some sleep."

She makes it halfway up the stairs, then looks back at me pointedly.

"Give me a minute. Be up soon."

Never one to baby me, Alice blows me a kiss and leaves without a word. As soon as I hear the click of the latch, I get up and walk down the last couple of stairs. Soon I am staring at the Jake-resurrected death mobile, its dusty shroud puddled on the floor at my feet. The motorcycle looks fragile, fragile beyond belief, like it might crumple into its own metal puddle under my touch. Like my mother herself looked in the moment after I was born, just before my father and I took the last of her humanity away.

I run my fingers along the rear rim, half hoping the bike _will_ crumble when I touch it. Maybe then Mama's half death wish would stop being so scary. The bike doesn't crumble though, just creaks very quietly. I close my eyes as I explore the nearly continuous skin of rust. The texture of the oxide is unfamiliar to me, a reminder of how long it's been since we last set foot in this house.

My fingers suddenly exit that forlorn metallic desert, finding an oasis of expensive black leather that's carelessly draped over the seat. Magnificent and incongruous, like a vampire in the middle of Forks.

I bury my face and fingers in the leather, thinking about this town, the place where I was born. I've seen how people look at us here, dazzled by the contrast between our beauty and what they're used to. Apparently the rest of them used to dazzle my mom beyond belief, and I feel a twinge of sadness at the thought that nothing might ever dazzle _me_ that way. How could it, when I've spent my whole life surrounded by unreal beauty?

Part of me knows that beauty isn't all of it. Mama always shivers when she talks about meeting my dad, then closes her eyes the way they all do when they're trying to hang onto human memories. Like she's trying to get off on her memory of what it was like to be afraid of him.

I understand a little because I remember when the Volturi came to Forks; I was too young to believe, in my heart of hearts, that anyone could hurt my family, but even the suggestion of deadly power was enough to quicken my heartbeat. No face has ever entranced me like little Jane's did, burning into my eyeballs with all the force of her terrible gift.

I take the jacket with me when I leave the garage, deciding I should hunt before bedtime. I hate going shopping with an itchy, burning throat.

I had no idea, when I left the garage, how utterly wrong I had been; wrong about the idea that nothing could ever truly dazzle me. I had no idea that I'd shortly see the perfection that was _her_. A deadly perfection like flowing russet venom, thousands of times more frightening than Jane.

In the morning, her beautiful face burns me like an afterimage, squeezed into the unreal space between waking and opening my eyes. My nose is buried in Mama's leather jacket, and my dreams have what I imagine to be the shape of her final human years. They are shot through with the sense that everything has started to change for me, that I'm about to go forth from my birth-world and claim a destiny that's all my own. Vampires may have been Bella Swan's future, but vampires are my past; they're the walking, talking endings of human stories, stories that stay closed to me because I was never human. They'll always be a part of me, like Charlie's a part of Mama and me, but somehow I know that I'm meant to be elsewhere, somewhere obscured by a phasing canine fog.

Everything makes much less sense, sadly, when the fog of sleep clears from my mind. It's hard to tell what's most disgusting: my un-showered body, the dusty jacket in my arms, or the fact that I feel happy on a morning that should be so sad. The jacket is evidence that _something_ odd happened last night, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with the vision I think I remember, the stunning female werewolf who was hunting and bathing in the woods.

I remember that Alice offered to take me to the bookstore this morning, but part of me doesn't want to spend time with the family right now. As soon as I talk to one of them, it'll be even harder to pretend that my private vision was real. Maybe it'll be like my memory of the suicide; an experience that seemed to belong to me but is actually something that only _they_ understand.

Jasper forged me my first ever driver's license for my birthday, so I decide to set out for the bookstore on my own. I scribble a note for my parents and climb into the old silver Volvo. The biker jacket doesn't fit too well into my girly, Alice-supplied wardrobe, but I feel like leaving it behind would break the spell I'm desperate to preserve. I make the drive to Port Angeles, and soon I'm paying my first ever parking meter fare. The town acquired a Barnes and Noble at some point in the last six years, much to my mother's excitement. I head straight for the classics section, relieved that I know exactly what I want. At least, I _thought_ I knew.

There are at least six translations of _Anna Karenina_ staring me in the face, each one emblazoned with a portrait of a different beautiful, busty woman. How should I know which is the real Anna, the one Alice thought would help me understand? What if the translator didn't even pick the image, or even someone who knows what the text of the book is like? Suddenly I feel like a scared little girl again, fidgeting and sending sidelong glances at people who must think I'm weird.

Other patrons edge past me quickly, plucking booksbrow like expert apple pickers. All except a girl who looks slightly taller and older than me.

She looks much less purposeful than any of the other customers, weaving through the aisles with a slow, vaguely Brownian gait. Sensing this, they edge past her the way they edge past me. Eventually, we end up together like oil drops excluded from a stream of water. A sidestep angles her body toward mine, and that's when I see her employee name tag.

She sees that I see her name tag and gives me a nervously friendly smile. "Do you need help finding anything?" she offers in a low, sweet voice.

"Um, yeah, that would be great, actually." This is already going _so_ much better than my attempts at high school socializing. "Um, how d'you think I should choose what translation of _Anna Karenina_ to buy?"

"Oh!" She sounds so relieved, ecstatic even. Not something one should feel when faced with so many choices. "It's my first week on the job, and I was hoping you wouldn't, like--" She looks down and blushes, ashamed of being a novice. "--ask me for something from the stockroom." She scans the shelf for a second or two, then extracts the only volume that doesn't render the heroine in oils. _The New Translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky_. There's a black and white photo of a flower bouquet, held in place by nondescript hand. But underneath the flowers…I blush and hide my face.

The girl--Angela--turns a deeper shade of red. Her flushed skin suddenly smells delicious beyond belief. "Don't worry; it's just her knees. Everyone thinks it's--you know, her butt or something--but they probably couldn't print that on the cover of a book. Anyway, it's definitely the best translation. Older versions can get kind of stuffy in some places." She moves as if to walk away, then stops, as if encouraged by my awkwardness. "Hey, so are you new to Port Angeles? I don't think I've seen you around before."

The real story would probably be too long, even if we weren't semi-undercover. "I'm just starting out at Peninsula College."

A beat of uncomfortable silence follows, and Angela begins to turn away. Embarrassed, because she braved being friendly and I didn't want to talk about myself. Suddenly desperate not to lose her right away, I try to turn the conversation to safer, more honest territory. "Have you lived here long?"

"I grew up in Forks, just south of here, but I went up to Seattle for college. I just moved back here to do some research." She pauses, like the length of her story is catching in her mouth. "I got my undergrad degree in folklore and mythology, and I really want to write about the Quileute tribe. You know; the people who live down at La Push. I've been poking around there, for the past few months, trying to learn their stories."

I panic when she looks like her story is done, like I'll have to make up stories about myself if I want to keep talking to her. Seemingly encouraged by my look of disappointment, she takes a deep breath and continues on more shyly. "The Quileutes always seemed kind of…magical to me. Maybe it's just that I've been visiting La Push all my life, and people who are different tend to impress a little kid, but--" She shrugs, as if dodging an oft-heard criticism. "So they say you should only do a Ph.D. if there's one research topic you're crazy about. I want to figure out what Quileute magic really is…I want to know so badly, and it seems like the right thing to do. I just have to learn how to spin it in a way that'll land me a thesis adviser." Her face is lit up from within at this point, flushed with excitement instead of silly embarrassment. But her chagrin is seeping back through the spaces between her words, and soon she looks every bit as embarrassed as before. "Sorry, I mean, I always talk too much when I get excited about work. I know it's really dorky of me."

"I think the Quileutes are magical too," I blurt out before deciding why I should think such a thing. Would they ever let an outsider discover their real secret? "I mean…I don't ever really get down to La Push, but I get that feeling from my Quileute friends."

Her face falls. "Everyone in the tribe is so sad right now. Something happened to a boy who was a little younger than me. In small towns and tribes, every death is like losing family, you know?" The sadness builds in her eyes as she pauses, along with a new kind of nervousness. "Hey--you don't have to or anything, but I'm driving down there after my shift, and you can totally come if you want to." She looks horrified at her boldness, and goes on to explain herself. "I've just never met anyone who agreed, before, about how the Quileutes seem magical. I can never explain it right, and people think I'm being racist or something."

I take a minute to debate ethics with myself. Violating the spirit of the law? Definitely. The letter of the law? Well, I'm not supposed to go to La Push on my own, and going with Angela _isn't_ going on my own. Never mind that 'not on my own' has always meant accompanied by family, since there was never anyone else in the picture to think about before. It's not like I'd tell anyone about this outing, anyway. "Yeah! I'd love to come!"

The drive to La Push with Angela is more fun than I've had in a long time. Totally worth the very slight exposure risk, especially when no one has to even know it happened.

My stomach flutters a little when I learn where she went to high school; guess that explains why Alice wouldn't come to the bookstore with me. Angela gives me a couple of puzzled squints and wonders aloud whether she's seen me before, but she seems to believe me when I act totally puzzled. Then we start talking about her long-time boyfriend Ben, whom she met just around the time my parents started dating. From the sound of it, Ben is every bit as protective as Daddy, worrying about Angela living on her own for the first time ever.

'I may've gone straight from the dorms to living in with Ben in Seattle, but honestly! Port Angeles is such a small town, you know? It doesn't seem right to settle down for good without living by myself for a little while, at least."

I feel impossibly let down when we arrive in La Push, considering how long I've been wanting to visit this place. But hanging out with Angela has been such a sudden new gift, and I don't feel any more ready to let her go than before.

She pulls over when two young men start waving from a nearby street corner. Their identically cropped hair makes them look like some kind of soldiers, and their faces are sad, but kind. Angela waves to them and the boys wave back.

"Nessie? I think I'll go say hi to Quil and Embry before I head over to the library. You should come meet them--they're really wonderful; they're starting to make me feel at home in La Push."

As we head toward the corner where the boys are lazily smoking, Angela asks if I'd like to come to a dinner she's hosting. Apparently she's a good cook--if only I could tell the difference--and wanted to make something nice for Quil and Embry and a couple of their friends. With any luck, I can get permission to go without telling my parents any guest list particulars. Over the years, I've learned a thing or two about keeping Daddy out.

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A/N: It would be lovely to hear what you think, as always :)

Next chapter will alternate between Leah and Nessie POVs. We shall see how observant Nessie manages to be at the dinner party…okay, excited to go back to writing now!

Not sure if the teaser was helpful last time around. I tend to procrastinate a lot while I think, then just sit down and write once I have enough ideas for most of a chapter, so I guess I have trouble coming up with teasers way in advance. Reviewers should let me know if they want one--I can definitely keep doing that if it adds something!


	5. Awakening

A/N: Stephanie Meyer owns Leah and Nessie, but she was kinda mean to them. That's why I have to write this story and…um…be mean to them too, for a little while longer.

Thank you to my wonderful perm betas SecretlySeverus and Reamhar! And a special thank you to the Chronic Meltdown, a dear reader, for stepping up to give Reamhar a break from editing this week. I love the rest of you readers as well, especially when I get to hear from you! Reviews, faves, and alerts have all been very much appreciated.

I have broken down and gotten a fanfic Twitter (kcerena)! If you follow me, I'll try my best to compose day-brightening tweets. To make up for angsting up your days when you come to read this fic :p

Hope you enjoy!

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"_That she was seeing with different eyes and making the acquaintance of new conditions in herself that colored and changed her environment, she did not yet suspect_." --Kate Chopin.

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_~Renesmee~_

It didn't end up mattering that I'd been "at the bookstore" for hours; that Alice was combing the future for tears and Emmett was scouring the town. That a waft or two of my scent, I'm sure, had made it to Charlie's doorstep, and a waft or two of La Push had probably made it to the surface of my thoughts. Angela Webber invited me to dinner and wants to be my friend, a miracle beyond my parents' wildest hopes for my social life. Apparently Angela was once their favorite human classmate, though I don't think I've ever heard them talk about her before.

We easily decide that I should pose as Edward's cousin. Another reason to stop the babyish "Daddy"-ing he loves so much. Now that my aging has slowed to a crawl, there's no reason we shouldn't stop moving for a while. No reason, really, to keep us from settling back down in Forks.

There _is_ some kind of secret reason why my parents don't want to stay here, but it seems like keeping the secret is more important to them than leaving town. Dad--err, _Edward_ stiffens when I sense that something's up, but the defeated slope of his shoulders says that the secret doesn't matter. That I've somehow become connected to the city where I was born, and it's too late for him to tear me away from that without hurting me.

Once again, Edward looks into my eyes and doesn't contradict what I'm thinking. Silent acquiescence, twice in two days, from the world's most opinionated telepath. I just wish that agreeing with me wouldn't make him look so pained.

The cousin charade will have to start right away at Seth's memorial service. Most people there will already know who I am, and that's why they're all going to ask.

We drive our most modest cars to La Push--the Volvo and the Jeep--and pair them with the plainest clothes I've ever worn in my life. Rose had looked askance at her high-necked black dress when Alice brought it home, muttering about what her family used to wear to society funerals in Rochester.

Folding chairs line a section of beach, looking like clam shells bereft of their flesh. Awkwardly early, we file into one of the middle rows.

Bella hesitates for a moment when she sees Charlie sitting up front, and she stumbles almost humanly as she half-moves to go to his side. But I guess the Quileutes wouldn't like it if the Cullens barged up to the front; my parents and aunts and uncles seem worried that people don't want us here at all.

The crests of white chairs in front of us now look more forlorn than ever, with Bella and Charlie wilting on opposite sides of a new divide. But Edward pulls Bella closer to him and Charlie puts an arm around Sue, his movement more halting than his son-in-law's but no less tender and loving. Neither gesture can bridge the gap that separates father and daughter, but they seem to surgically stabilize it, making it gape less painfully.

Charlie and Sue look alright somehow, missing Seth but completing each other; it's mainly Leah, towering over her Mom, who looks completely bereft.

As they arrive, mourners begin to sit between us and the Clearwaters, easily filling the divide that looked impassible when it was empty. No one seems very comfortable with sitting near us or up front, but little by little the seats fill up until latecomers have to stand.

At first, I hope the other mourners might help Leah feel less alone. Soon, though, I can't help resenting anyone who gets too close to her. She's wilting in her seat like an R.V.-dirtied landscape, a wild thing crowded by people who hurt what beauty they try to appreciate. I can't look away, and I worry that I'm hurting her too, crowding too closely into her space with my eyes.

It's pretty surreal to hear Seth's life get crammed into ninety minutes, especially when a lot of it doesn't seem to be about Seth at all. You'd think he died in a war or something, with the talk about young men making sacrifices for their tribe. I can't decide whether to wish they'd focus on Seth or to wish that I had a tribe like he did. It would be nice to feel like my life revolved around something more important than myself, more important than learning to play with lots and lots of chess boards at once.

Soon the service ends, and people begin to mingle. Mingle with each other, that is; not with any of us. The non-Quileutes treat us like the kids at high school did, smiling over-politely and trying to act like they aren't steering clear. To my surprise, I could hardly care less how they act. I feel oddly detached from the girl who left high school in tears last week, like thoughts about love and death have made my aging speed up again.

Some of the Quileutes, on the other hand, act anything but over-polite. They give us looks that make me feel like I _do_ belong to a tribe, a tribe of bloodthirsty killers who have some nerve to invade their land. It hurts when they look at me that way, but it hurts more to see them turn that look on any of my family. We were all born killers, either the second time or the first--my mother's ruined human face is now paired with Seth's in my nightmares--but we are only a family because we know that killing is wrong.

I hate that I have to talk to them, to lie about who I am. The lying makes me feel like we _are_ killers, like they're right to look at us that way. I guess my parent were right all along to keep me away from La Push; I'd rather stay in town where lying doesn't feel like admitting I'm a monster.

It's nice, at least, to see the Quileutes I already knew from before. Billy is nice to the rest of the family, though I don't think he likes me much.

I have no idea if Leah likes me, or even if she thinks I'm a killer. I can barely see her outline through a swarm of nodding respect-payers, and she looks like she's about to crack under the pressure of all the attention.

My heart leaps when Angela appears. Then I remember that I'm going to have to lie to her, just like everybody else. She says hi to my parents with a touch of over-politeness and looks at my mother a little too long and hard, like she knows that the brown-eyed mortal she knew has somehow been transformed.

My parents and Angela run low on things to say after ten-odd minutes of chit chat. It's longer than I've seen my parents talk to any other acquaintance, but Angela is clearly embarrassed by the way they're so vague about their postgrad lives. She's about to say goodbye, to go find her family, when suddenly her parents show up.

"Edward! Bella!" Mrs. Webber exclaims, squeezing each of their hands and wincing at the coldness. "Goodness! How _are_ you?" Without waiting for an answer, she starts talking a mile a minute, detailing the activities of her tensely smiling daughter. "And who is this pretty young lady?" She eventually asks, leering widely at me. "Family, obviously, from--where were you? California?"

"Yes, Mrs. Webber," Edward offers with bittersweet smile. "My cousin Renesmee has decided to join us in Forks for the time being."

"Renesmee! What an interesting name!" Mrs. Webber's smile is as hollow and unsure as Edward's. Maybe she's wondering whether to ask if my parents are still alive, and why it is that Edward and I didn't grow up together. Instead, she retreats from the perplexing topic of me.

"So how has _married_ life been treating you kids?" Her grin this time approaches Cheshire cat proportions. Behind her, Angela closes her eyes in a silent sigh. As if on cue, Mrs. Webber pinches her daughter's arm. "Maybe Angie'd listen to _you_ if you told her how much she's missing."

Edward sends Angela an apologetic look, but can't seem to keep himself from grinning. My dear old dad, give up an invite to act like a sap over Mom? "Married life is utterly perfect. Better than I dared imagine. Every day with my darling bride delights me more than the last."

Bella covers her face with her hands as if hiding her lack of a blush. Probably a wise move; I'd be pretty suspicious if I saw her stay pale after a comment that disgusting. She opens her mouth as if to issue a retort, but instead just gazes into Daddy's eyes like she's strung out on her own personal brand of heroin. Ugh…sometimes, I really wish I were capable of vomiting.

Mrs. Webber's smile widens, but her eyes don't lose their focus. "It's been just the two of you for quite a while now. Think there'll be a kid in the plans anytime soon?"

Bella's lip trembles as she shoots me a desperate look. Edward pulls her tightly into his side, his face a stony mixture of protectiveness and regret. Mrs. Webber takes in both of their reactions with delicately raised eyebrows, and Edward grinds his teeth in response to her thinly veiled thoughts. "Not just yet," he offers unnecessarily.

The awkwardness is intense enough for Mrs. Webber to dash away, keeping her pleasant salutations to a minimum. She shepherds Angela by the upper arm as if guiding a ten-year-old child.

"See you tonight, Nessie?" Angela calls apologetically, her pitch slanting nervously upward toward a squeak. I wave back with a grin on my face that's not appropriate for a funeral, guiltily happy that my own family isn't so bad, all things considered.

Even though my hearing isn't quite as good as my parents', I can easily hear Mrs. Webber jabbering a mile a minute to her husband. Apparently it's sad and ironic that some kinds of infertility tend to make people more beautiful.

Bella asks Edward to take her home, much to the family's carefully hidden relief. Once again, we pile into the two old cars, and I hug my mother tightly in the backseat of the Volvo.

"You'll always be my mom, no matter what everyone else has to think," I whisper into her ear after kissing her forehead and temple. I lean my head down farther so that she can kiss me back.

"I know, sweetheart," she responds doubtfully. "As long as you see me that way."

_~Leah~_

I don't even bother to take off my clothes before I phase. It's an honest-to-God miracle that I've kept it together this long. I just want is to run until my body blurs to nothing, 'til no one could ever find me to say how sorry they are for my loss.

It's just my luck that the pack mind is occupied when I get there. Shocker of shockers: Jake's thinking about Nessie, obsessing over how she never tried to hold his hand at the funeral.

_Sorry my brother's funeral was such a fucking disappointment. Taking a girl on a crazy date like that means expecting to get to third base. Minimum._

_Fucking hell, Leah. Like you've never thought about Sam and Emily during anyone's funeral. _

_Actually, don't think I did that today. Not even once, as I recall._

I try to remember how long Sam and Emily stayed at the reception. They were definitely part of the well-wisher stream, but I can't even remember whether they talked to me early or late-ish. I do remember that Jake, for one, was conspicuously absent from the mob.

He gives a heavy mental sigh. _I'm sorry about that. The family left kind of suddenly, and they need me to come with._

That's right. They go and treat most of the reception like a fucking debutante ball, introducing their little "cousin" to everyone on the Rez; then they go and talk to Angela Webber's mom, and she says something to make them look like somebody just died.

_It's rough on them, Leah. Having to pretend she's not their daughter when she's not even seven years old yet. _

_They pretend a hell of a lot of other things around her. Shouldn't they be pretty damn used to it at this point?_

I gasp as I'm hit with an intense wave of pain. Not more intense than my own familiar pain, but jarring like an AM radio transmission.

_Guess they know how it feels now_, I try to think in a comforting tone. _Lying about your love for someone who's the most important thing in your world. _None of the wolves with child imprints like taking their girls off the Rez, where they have to get in the closet with their love and hide it like it's some kind of crime.

_Yeah._ He sighs again, regretting the fact that there's so little room for lies between us. _I wish I could say it'll get easier for them. _

_Why the hell do _you_ care how _easy_ their lives are?_

_They're family to me now, Leah. And Nessie can't be happy if they aren't happy. _

I thank my lucky stars, for the hundred millionth time, that I've been spared the blight of imprint-brain. For once, Jake seems too tired to offer a retort.

_So d'you think she's happy now?_ I ask after a pause. By Jake's own logic, I should care about the answer, especially since Jake's pain is often literally my pain.

_Overall? Yeah, I think so._ At my wordless skepticism, he gets more defensive. _The past few days have been rough on her, but in general? She's a fairytale princess without a stepmother or anything. The most spoiled half-vampire in existence._

_Yeah, princess, that sounds about right. The kind who spends her whole life locked up in a tower alone. _I expect Jake to make some kind of Prince Charming-related comeback, and I realize when he doesn't that things are seriously fucked up.

_Thanks for your concern, Leah,_ he shoots back at me testily. _By the way…just because you saw her once and talked to her for, like, two seconds, you can't seriously think you suddenly know her better than I do. _

_Fuck Jake; I didn't say… _My thought-speech trails off uselessly. We both know it's not something I ever intended to say, but the kind of overheard thought you politely ignore unless it truly pisses you off.

_So what do your fabulous character insights tell you is gonna happen at this party_? Jake asks. It takes me a second to remember what he's talking about. Ah, yes: Angela Webber playing unwitting hostess to werewolves. They'd better hope she's an O.C.D. hostess who cooks way, way too much food.

_Dunno, actually. The girl isn't stupid, but doesn't everyone know they're supposed to lie to her all the time? Besides. Quil and Sam should be smart enough to not want their sexual preferences written up in a thesis. _

_So sounds like you think she won't figure it out. _

_Like I said, I dunno, Jake. The girl isn't stupid. _

_~Renesmee~_

"Do you think it's enough?" Angela asks me anxiously, grabbing my hand and pushing her kitchen door open. The table and range are groaning under the weight of what she's cooked: a turkey, a ham, and about a garden's worth of vegetables.

"Yes, I think so," I tell her cautiously. I can't tell her how sad it looks compared to a meal of deer, even, but it looks to be maybe five times what Esme would cook for Jake.

"I really hope they like it," she sighs and looks at her watch, but the flicker of worry gives way to excitement before I can think of comforting her. "Wait here!" she tells me, opening the pantry and bending down to rummage. "I picked up something special that I want you to try before dinner."

I try to concentrate on how Jake always looks when he tastes a yummy new food, wishing I'd thought to practice that face in front of a mirror at home. But all thoughts of fakery go right out the window when Angela straightens up again, a bottle of blood-colored liquid in her hand.

My own blood rushes from my brain to my stomach, leaving my mind free to bubble with happy delusions. _She knew all along? I don't have to pretend? Mom and Dad were kidding themselves that nobody knew what was up with them?_ But of course it's only wine, good enough wine that my astonishment pleases Angela. The bitter vapors are interesting, but I feel too disappointed to enjoy them very much. When the doorbell rings, I close my eyes and take a moment to feel sorry for myself.

"Quil! Embry! Thanks for coming!" Angela exclaims, elated. Her face lighting up as if she didn't believe they really _would_ come. She seems pleased by the way that the wolves tower over her, and they each kiss her cheek as they thank her for her hospitality. We sit down to eat as soon as Sam and Emily arrive.

I keep mostly quiet as the conversation picks up. From the sounds of it, Angela spends most of her time on the Rez. Listening to them talk is like staring through a window at a life I'll never have, watching random dramas from five places at once without being accused of spying.

Angela looks both happy and worried when the wolves take third and fourth helpings. I can practically see her taking measurements to calculate the half life of the ham. I feel like I should say something to take her mind off hostessing, but the thing I end up blurting out is probably not the best choice.

"It was nice of your whole family to come to the funeral today."

"Oh God, Nessie, I'm so sorry about that. My mom means well, she really does, but your poor cousins…I --I'm really glad you still came tonight, anyway." Angela offers her other guests a watery smile. "My mom gave Edward and Bella a hard time about, you know, not having kids yet. They'll never want to talk to me again, no that you could blame them." Even through her shame, Angela looks confused when none of the Quileutes quite hide their knowing smirks.

"My mom's the same way," Quil offers commiseratively. "She used to bug Sam and Emily about when they were gonna get married, but that was just a warmup for starting on when they were gonna have kids. You two had Carl--what, eighteen months after the wedding? You'd think it'd been eighteen years, to hear her talk." He shoots a rueful grin at the burly wolf across from him. "Wasn't she bugging you about making plans for a fourth kid? When you were already going crazy with three? Anyway, I think Sam-and-Emily-gossip has finally gotten less fun for her, so now the topic of choice is Embry the old maid here." He claps his friend on the shoulder, and the skinnier wolf groans.

"Does she ever bug you about getting married?" I ask. No one in my family has ever said things like that to me, probably 'cause they think of me more as a six-year-old girl than anything.

Quil looks uncomfortable, while Angela looks a bit puzzled. "Nah, she knows I'd never listen. But strong silent types like Sam and Embry here? Pushovers; both of 'em. She spots 'em a mile away and gets out the meddlesome old lady guns."

"What about your sister? Is she a pushover?" Maybe this counts as prying, but I'm still really curious. I can ask Angela later whether my questions got rude and nosy.

"My sister?" Quil asks. "I don't have--" He shuts up when Embry elbows him. I don't get why, and Angela doesn't seem to either. "Oh, you mean Claire!" His face lights up. "She's not my sister. I just, you know, babysit her a lot. Yeah, been trying for a while to make that inner badass come out. It's gotta be buried somewhere; you shoulda seen her when she was two. No way in hell I'm letting my girl grow up to be a pushover."

Embry seems to find this funny. "Dunno if it's Claire you should worry about, if you really wanna talk pushovers. What about the 'babysitter' who plays _Candyland_ off the clock?"

Sam gives them a warning look, probably reminding them that dinner guests aren't supposed to fight with each other. But the meal wraps up uneventfully, and Angela brings out dessert and coffee. The coffee is my favorite because it isn't trying to be food; it's more like an interesting perfume that makes you jittery when you drink it.

It's dark and rainy outside by the time the Quileutes head back to La Push. Angela looks happy when I offer to help clean up, though she tells me several times that I totally don't have to. I'm glad that I know exactly what to do in this kind of social situation, having seen Edward give Bella enough presents to know that I don't have to listen to Angela say no.

It would have been fun to try washing dishes, but I settle for drying duty since that looks harder to screw up.

"That was a really great dinner party," I say with a grin, trying to fake enough confidence to hide my lack of party experience.

"Wow, you really think so?"

"Definitely. I know so."

"I wasn't sure whether to cancel, when I heard, you know, about Seth."

"No, I think it was good. Sue and Leah and Charlie…they seem pretty quiet and private. I don't think they'd want everyone trying to be there for them in person."

"Yeah, I think you're right." Angela gives me an interested smile. "I wish I were as good as you at figuring people out."

"M-Me? Good at figuring people out?"

She grins and flicks a bit of soap suds my way. "Give yourself some credit, Nessie. What you said just now, about the Clearwaters? It gave me this picture in my head of how they looked at the funeral, like they were just putting on a show that everyone else expected of them. I feel a little ashamed now, that I stayed to pay my respects. I thought I should do that, since I knew Charlie a little from high school, but he looked so pained and stressed out when I got to him. I hate that I went with the crowd and made myself part of the problem."

"You weren't part of the problem, Angela. Bella told me she liked how you didn't try to fill up silences, like you knew when talking would end up making things worse instead of better." I don't tell Angela that this was the first thing Bella ever told me about her, that Bella had apparently liked her for being quiet and ignorable. Real friendship with Angela would have been as easy for Bella as breathing, but Bella had chosen not to be bothered with normal high school friendships. I would have to fight hard to make a different choice for myself, but at least that fight might help me appreciate Angela more than my mom did.

I still don't know how she could say what she said just now, about me being somehow good at understanding non-freaks. "But…people are usually so confusing to me. And I don't know the right things to say to them. Like tonight; I guess my family isn't much like Quil's or Embry's, and I wanted to keep asking them what they meant by things they said. I don't know which questions are good for small talk and which are, like, prying too much."

Angela shakes her head. "I get that feeling so many times a day, working on the Rez. Most of the time, everyone knows everyone else's business--it's small like Forks, and personal questions are expected. But sometimes people get defensive, like I've crossed some invisible line. After the fact, they won't even admit I've done something wrong; it's like there are unwritten boundaries on what I'm allowed to know, but that those boundaries are the best-kept secret at all." I immediately think of Edward and Bella and whatever secret made them reluctant to stay in Forks.

Angela pauses, then goes on as if reading my mind. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I feel like that happens all the time while I'm talking to Edward and Bella. It was the same way in high school. It would have been nice to be Bella's friend, but there can only be so many secrets between friends."

We finish the rest of the cleanup in silence. Before I leave, I hug Angela tightly. I try to tell her, with pressure instead of words, that I'm different from my mother, that I have to keep some secrets to protect my family and my species, not because humanity isn't good enough for me.

_~Leah~_

_The white girl sure can cook, Jake-man. You've really gotta get yourself an invite next time. _A pause. _You too, Leah. How long are you south of the border for, anyway?_

_Depends_, I respond, not bothering to try and work out what it depends on.

_I just about pissed in my pants when the girl asked if Claire was my sister. She really doesn't know _anything_? At _all_?_

Our negative response is just a jumble of wordless frustration.

Quil offers Jake a heartfelt _Shit man, I'm sorry_, and is outta our minds in about the time it takes to quit out of Gchat. Our pack mind may be small, but it sure is good at keeping itself that way.

_I'm sorry too, Jake,_ I offer lamely. Once in a blue moon, the telepathy has its uses, picking up the slack when words are pretty fucking inadequate.

Jake mentally shrugs, as if he could feign nonchalance with me. _It's funny, in a way. Didn't think I wanted her to find out the truth tonight; not from total strangers, with me not there to explain. But the second I learn that she _didn't_ find out…fucking heartbreak out of nowhere. _His mental voice is a monotone, steamrolled by pain and devotion.

Suddenly, I'm tired of this goddamn animal body. Tired of being flattened by someone else's fucking neurosis. I run home, crawl through my window, and launch myself at my bed, phasing midair so I won't get fur on the sheets.

The shockwaves of borrowed emotion take a while to leave my system, and I hug my naked body as I ride out the worst of the hurt.

I hiss like I've been burned when I graze my breast with a fingernail. My sense of smell may take a hit when I turn from wolf to human, but my skin's increased sensitivity fills the vacuum and then some.

Even when most of the hurt is gone, Jake's hand-me-down want remains. Remains, and grows stronger as I touch my breasts in earnest, an unfamiliar knot tightening just below my stomach. I reach between my legs to find a shit ton of metaphorical cobwebs, plus another shit ton of very non-metaphorical wetness.

I set to work on the cobwebs for the first time in years, flinching away from my fingers at first but quickly growing used to the feeling. Soon, my body starts jerking very differently, and I gasp like I'm waking from a goddamn enchanted princess nap.

It's anticlimactic, though not so fucking surprising, when I come down from my high to find that nothing much has changed. My mind is still drowning in Jake's hand-me-down frustration.

The tightness in my stomach has settled down a notch, but every time I breathe I feel a hollowness pinch my chest. I long, impossibly, for my sheets to smell like flowers, for the scent to have rubbed off a redhead who likes to scrape her nose and teeth along my throat.

Real panic hits me when that image fucking consciously excites me. I'll _die_ if Jake's sick obsession is stuck in my head forever!

I've never understood how the tart in Jake's head could be worth a tenth of this crap. She's basically a Barbie doll with a cayenne pepper dye job. I've been seeing her through Jake's eyes since the day she was fucking born, never feeling a goddamn thing in my lady bits or my heart. But now…_no. NO_.

I close my eyes and all I can see are huge brown eyes mounted on stilt legs. A patchwork girl who dresses herself in leather and lace contradictions, teetering on the boundary of a not-quite-make-believe world. A girl whose words are so naive that you trust what content they have, like snapshots taken by a traveler who has no point to prove about the scenery.

It takes me two or three seconds to decide what I have to do.

_~Renesmee~_

Even though I know that my reflexes are perfect, the rainy drive home still scares me a little. Every micro-skid makes my stomach give a lurch, and the plastic steering wheel groans beneath my palms.

I turn on my brights just before I reach our lane, and swerve when I round the bend to see a person standing there. Her ruined clothing clings to the angles of her body, and I recognize those angles by the way my breath starts to catch.

I set the parking brake without even bothering to pull over. I call out her name like a question as I splash away from the car, giving my door a shove that's either too weak or too strong to close it.

"L-Leah? It's so wet outside. You--you should get in the car with me. I'll drive you back to La Push."

"I can drive myself back," she answers measuredly. Only then do I notice the car parked beyond the road bend.

"Then why are you…"

"I needed to see you."

I'm shocked by the force of the warmth that hits me. "Really? Y-you've been waiting here? For _me_?"

Her flint-hard eyes cut through my euphoria like butter, and I can't decide whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," I say, remembering my manners. Instead of answering she asks a question that confuses me even more.

"You have a freaky gift, right? You show people things?"

I nod, squeezing my hands more tightly behind my back. My heartbeat shivers, chilled by her stare, and slowly I raise one hand to her face.

I stop when I can feel the heat radiating from her skin, my fingers freezing millimeters away from one sculpted cheekbone. Her skin looks so much more alive than mine, porous like silk and filigreed with blood. To touch it would be incomparable to anything I could show her in return.

Disregarding this fact, she grabs my hand and flattens it to her cheek, pressing on my fingers hard enough to pinch her capillaries closed.

It often ends embarrassingly when I touch someone's face without meaning to, but my mind is currently so focused that I doubt my stray thoughts tell her anything. Her eyes turn to flint as if my mental stupor displeases her. When she speaks again, her voice is flintier still, but somehow very breakable.

"I want you to show me Jacob."

A sting of rejection leaves me momentarily speechless. I was stupid not to figure out earlier why she was waiting to see me.

Midway through my standard act-your-apparent-age-already mental pep talk, I realize that the rain makes it pointless to hold back my tears this time. I focus on keeping my breathing steady and start dredging through my memories.

I cycle through a series of uncreative standby images, kicking myself for being even less good at this than usual. Lots of clips show Jake laughing or making funny faces, and lots show him hiding his crotch before or after phasing.

Leah stirs the air with her hand when she wants to make me go faster, palming it like a crossing guard when she wants us to slow down and look. I wish I could tell what she thinks of the pictures, but all I call tell is that she's pretty displeased with me.

"_Look_ at the damn _pictures,_" she finally hisses. I try to remember what Jake looked like the last time we paused, and I realize with chagrin that I was entirely focused on Leah.

We pause for a while on what I thought was a throwaway shot. Me beating Jake at checkers. Leah looks so strained and bored that I move to pull my hand away, but freeze when she shoots me a bloodcurdling glare.

"_Look_ at what he's looking at," she says as if to a child, then moves us on to a shot of Jake in profile.

I notice something odd when we switch back and forth between these photos. Jake looks more relaxed in profile, but happier straight on. The difference is biggest in my more recent memories.

Leah looks like she wants me to say something, and there isn't really anything else I can think of to say right now. "He seems sort of happier when he's looking at me, but more stressed out, too?" My tone rises at the end out of nervousness and habit, but I've said it to fill the silence and don't expect her to answer. I definitely don't expect her to jerk her face away from me and grip me by the shoulders so hard her finger bones creak. With her face bent almost to mine, she whispers beneath what I think is the human register.

"You're his whole. Fucking. World. For better. Or for _worse_."

I gape like an imbecile, then reach for her face without thinking. An image unfolds at the juncture of our minds, surprising me more than it seems to surprise her. It's the cliff-side memory I've been trying and failing to unload on people who are stronger than me.

Leah raises her hand to mine and I start to pull away, horrified that I've somehow decided to show her her brother's death. But instead of moving to free herself, she crushes my hand to her face again, demanding a slower replay with a flash of her flinty eyes.

"Do you love him?" She asks in a choked up voice. I slowly and truthfully nod.

For the first time since I stepped into the rain, I feel chilled all over. I hope for a moment that Leah will notice and wrap me up to take care of me, but God…how could she when she looks like death herself? Her bony body is shaking like a leaf and her stringy hair looks wilted. Werewolves can probably catch colds and things--didn't Jake, that one time in--

"Wait, Leah!"

Her tires are flinging wet gravel my way before I have time to blink.

***

He's sitting up waiting when I walk through the front door. Edward and Bella are on the couch too, and they all react theatrically to my waterlogged state.

I climb into Jacob's lap without saying a word to anyone. He lifts me effortlessly and carries me to the bathroom, where Bella is already waiting with warm pajamas for me to put on. She gives Jake a loving glance and me a very concerned one. "I'll let Jake take care of you, Baby, if that's what you want. Daddy and I'll be in our room, and we'll come check on you in a minute, okay?" She leans down to kiss me before flitting off, and I kiss her cheek absently in return.

Jake lowers his big form to the floor with me in his arms, crossing his legs on the tile in front of him and shifting my weight to one arm. He gently removes my shoes with one hand, then gives me a long, tight hug.

"What happened, Boo Boo Bat?" He asks, cupping my face. He uses a towel to dry my face and hair, then wraps it around my shoulders, trying to squeeze some of the water from my shirt.

"Nothing." I shrug. "You know I can't catch cold."

"I still want you to get out of these clothes, okay?"

Jake tries to put me down, but I cling tightly to his neck. He looks at me in confusion, then moves to pry my hands away.

I panic, knowing that I have to act fast, before he forces me away. Not knowing quite what to do, I press my lips to his.

Jake's fingernails dig into my ribs as he coughs into my mouth. My weight lurches and I almost hit my head on the side of the tub, but Jake recovers fast enough to steady me in his arms. His whole body is shaking and making my own body shake in his arms.

"I'm sorry," I whisper between chattering teeth. "I thought you wanted to."

"I--I--God, Nessie, is this what you _want_? I guess…wow. They said not to give up hope, but I was so afraid…"

He looks at me with a strangely creased brow. It looks like one of Daddy's expressions has been grafted onto Jacob's face. But that kind of graft could never take for very long, and soon I'm looking up into a very Jacob grin. Gently but eagerly, he leans his face toward mine, smoothing back my still damp curls and brushing our lips together.

I smile shakily into his mouth, parting my lips almost by accident. I jump when I feel his tongue lick my teeth, and he quickly ends the kiss.

"It's okay, Jake," I say as steadily as I can. "I just don't really know how this is supposed to feel, you know." I place a tentative kiss on his jaw and crane back up to his lips. He holds me warily at arms length for a moment, then tips his mouth back to mine. This time I ready myself to touch my tongue with his. I have no idea if I'm doing it right, and it feels weird and slimy, but I've always been one for trying new things and I think I could learn to like this.

We both freeze when we hear a bell-like sob issue from the doorway. "S-shit, Ness, I left the door open," Jake stammers unnecessarily.

I turn around to see Edward hugging Bella to his chest. Her hands cover her face, and her shoulders and back are trembling.

"Is Mama okay?" I gasp through a blush, more horrified than I know how to explain.

"Yes," Daddy says with a strange, sad smile. "She's just very, very happy."

* * *

A/N: Holy crap. Poor Leah. If you give me some review love, I'll be sure to pass it on to her!

I hope you guys don't think I'm being too hard on Bella and Edward, BTW. I feel like teenagers learn to see their parents' faults before they learn to see their good qualities, as a rule. I'm pretty fascinated by Bella's lack of enthusiasm for high school friends and normal human rituals--I was guilty of similar disinterest, because of science geek activities rather than a vampire bf, and I'm still trying to decide whether I missed something by having a Bella-type attitude about prom and graduation.


	6. The Botany of Desire

A/N: Thank you so much to BelleDean and SecretlySeverus for checking and rechecking this chapter! Hopefully all their hard work was enough to help me get this into digestible form. I also owe a big thank you to everyone who read and reviewed last chapter. Your response was so, so heartwarming, and I'll try hard to deserve more excitement like that in the future. Nice reviews really ease the writer's block and make this ride more fun.

I am not Stephanie Meyer. That is all. Hope you enjoy!

* * *

"Think'st thou I'd make a life of jealousy,

To follow still the changes of the moon

With fresh suspicions? No; to be once in doubt,

Is once to be resolved." --_Shakespeare, Othello_

_~Leah~_

For the first few months after I left the Rez six years ago, I lived a bit like those leech nomads who'd "witnessed" for the Cullens or whatever. Minus the part where cold-blooded murder is the reason for every move. I would have gone to go to college, to anger therapy or whatnot, except for a catch-22: you can't go to class, even anger management class, when remembering something that makes you mad could phase you before the bell rings. I couldn't get a job and I wouldn't ask mom for cash, so all I could do was suck it up and enjoy my deer _al tartare_.

Anger Management Tips Dot Com suggested "changing your environment," and that much I could do. I ran as a human when I was strong enough not to phase, and ran as a wolf when I wasn't. When I had vocal cords and lips, I put them to good use, muttering, "accentuate the positive. Put your anger on hold. Use humor to calm yourself down."

Sometimes it wasn't enough to tick techniques off on passing trees. The pressure would build behind my eyes until everything started to sparkle. Vamps and imprints would start moving in circles through my mind, screaming at me for wanting what I would never, ever deserve. Whenever that happened, I had a time goal ready, giving myself permission to phase if I could wait for X whole minutes. Only when I'd upped that waiting time to an hour did I feel safe looking for a job.

At that point, I was bemused to find that I'd run all the way to the Yukon. The boreal forest around me looked like nature's own Christmas tree farm, different as hell from the gnarly old growth firs we have at home. Sam and I used to get cozy in the gaps between geriatric tree roots, and I started getting better control of myself once old trees got few and far between. I kept my temper and ran at human speed when the trees were young and smooth, letting werewolf speed propel me out of forests were the trees upset me.

I signed onto the forest service to keep in touch with the trees where I had found peace, and worked pretty hard at my self-control for my first couple of years in Canada. But my endurance plateaued pretty soon after that as I started forgetting to hate what I was. I didn't have the foresight to know that Jake's life might come to depend on me keeping my cool.

It's possible that Jake would overlook my new secrets if we bumped minds casual-like. I could probably hide things for a minute if I tried, but there are no words for the shit we'd be in as soon as I let something slip. I should really stay human unless I know Jake's out in public and there's no chance that he'll phase and see the matchmaker stunt I pulled.

It's way too risky to stay up late and phase when Jake should be sleeping; until recently at least, he'd wake up alone and take angst runs at ungodly hours. I wouldn't be surprised if he's doing that still, lonely at night or not. Othello's got nothing on an imprinted wolf for crazy. Jake probably wakes up worried he's going to lose the girl he's been waiting for; it really wouldn't go so well if he phased all jealous and learned that she'd needed a little push to get with him.

The other thing he'd learn if he phased would not be that big a deal to him. He'd probably get fucking turned on if he knew I can't stop thinking about his girl. Quil would probably start hanging in our pack mind more often so he and Jake could fucking jerk off to my pathetic girl-on-girl fantasies.

Compared to that outcome, it's downright un-pathetic to be crouching nonstop in the Cullen woods, hanging on Jacob's every move like he's a drug lord in charge of my fix. I need to track him closely enough to know when it's safe for me to phase, i.e. when he's taking Nessie into town to see people who prefer him human.

I want to phase so bad that the twitching is way past coffee-tremor levels. The twitching probably makes me look like a meth-starved homeless lady, and the humiliation is _so_ not helping my calm control right now.

I give up looking at the decrepit old firs, letting myself fall to my hands and knees. Even the floor of this forest feels different; the boreal soil was thin and almost bare, but this ground squishes up around my hands. Not mucky squish, but the clean, squeaky squish of star moss blanketing the ground.

I start to feel better once I'm sitting back on my heels, a sprig of star moss between my thumb and forefinger. It looks almost like a two-inch-tall replica of a spruce, with a cone of green branches surrounding a pointed red stalk at the tip. My breathing slows and deepens till my eyes drift slackly shut.

"Heya, Leah! Long time no see."

Jake might have said something more after that, but I sure as hell wouldn't have heard it. Blood and adrenaline pound through my mind, and I almost explode then and there.

Luckily, when I open my eyes, Jake isn't even watching me sweat. His grin is bloated with being in love, which for Jake seems to mimic a food coma.

"Hey, Leah," echoes the blushing babe on his arm, and I nod once in response. Her eyes brighten when she says the words, and for a second, she and Jake wear imbecile grins that match. My stomach emphatically hates the sight of them looking that way together, and I have to wrap my arms around my middle like I have a cramp.

"Hey, you two," I answer, getting up when I remember how to breathe.

Jake and Nessie wait as if expecting me to say more. But remembering how to breathe is not the same as remembering how to make snarky comments.

The silence drags on into awkwardness, which eats at Jake's bliss-shell a little. It's been years since we've tried to talk with our mental filters up, and it seems that those filters block out everything we usually have to say.

"So what have you been up to the past few days?" Jake asks a little too innocently. It's unheard of for us to go a whole week without bumping minds, and he's probably wondering what's up. I hoped he'd be busy enough with Nessie not to notice, but I guess I wasn't paranoid to think that his angst runs might continue.

"Oh, you know. Helping mom." That much is true, anyway. "It's strange to be back home. Especially with…just mom and Charlie there."

"You think you're gonna stay long?" It's like Jake is determined to stand here and prove we can talk like normal friends. I might be annoyed with him if Nessie didn't go all tense when he asks me that. Damn my mind and its grasping at goddamn straws; it's not like the girl could give a fuck what country I decide to live in.

"I'll stay as long as mom needs me." _Damn_ it feels good to filter my thoughts.

"It's good to have you back, Leah."Jake smiles and turns to go. I can tell he's telling the truth, and that it's an edited truth like mine. He's still weirded out by my avoiding him, but hopefully not enough to confront me.

The three of us wave goodbye, my heart making way too much of the look in Nessie's eyes. _This is what you wanted, dumbass! Everyone's alive, and she seems happier than before._

I lag a few hundred paces, making sure the track their course. If anything happens to Jake now, it'll be my fault for meddling and lying to him.

_~Renesmee~_

After we kissed, Jake waited a week to tell me I was beautiful. He snuck up behind me to whisper it in my ear, and it sounded more like a confession than a compliment.

"You're just like your mom," he told me when I asked him what he meant. His mouth lolled dog pant-style when I told him that I'm not.

"I didn't mean that I'm not beautiful," I clarified, rolling my eyes at his smirk. "I mean that I'm not trying to be modest like Bella. You tell me that I'm beautiful all the time, but just now you sounded like you were trying to say something else."

He told me that I should "be quiet, silly," and turned me around to kiss me. We kissed for so long that I started to feel dizzy, remembering how it had felt to drink wine at Angela's party.

My head cleared as soon as we came up for air, but I still felt like some kind of fog hovered between us. It was like Jake had whispered, "I have a secret," then twiddled his thumbs as soon as I asked him what it was.

I picked up my book and flounced up the stairs in a huff, having refused to try to sleep in a cottage where my parents emphatically do _not_ sleep.

Even without having to listen to my parents frolic, I had trouble keeping my eyes closed that night. I felt surer than ever that Jake's secret had something to do with Seth's suicide; that something bad would happen if I couldn't somehow clear away the fog from between us.

I tiptoed out of bed without deciding where I was going, not deciding completely until I had opened the door to Jake's room. I slipped between his sheets and wrapped my arms around his middle, willing the heat of our bodies to burn up that awful fog of secrets. Maybe I was being stupid to think that Jake was somehow in danger, but even if he wasn't, he'd been my best friend forever. I felt guilty for wanting to keep my own little secrets recently, and I just wanted things between us to be perfect like they were when I was little.

Jake stopped mid-snore when he felt me press against his back, rolling over in a way that didn't tell me whether he had woken. Nuzzling my neck, he ghosted his hands all over my clothed torso. His touch was so light that it felt like he was worshipping my silhouette, not my body.

It felt strange to leave the house with Jake after waking up in his bed, like someone from my dream had up and followed me into my day.

At that point I was still half sure that meeting Leah in the rain had been a dream. Maybe the drive had scared me enough to make me delusional or something. But as soon as I saw her kneeling in the moss, I knew the other night had been real.

She was staring at the sprig of moss in her hand as if her whole life hinged upon it somehow. I couldn't help thinking that that's how Jake and I must look together, my size and worth comically failing to explain what this big man feesl for me. Then Leah transferred eye contact from the moss sprig onto me, and the slant of her eyes told me to keep what had passed between us a secret.

I shut up quickly when she gave me that look. I didn't want the evidence that something had happened between us to be written all over my voice. I was also afraid she'd be able to sense how badly she'd freaked me out. She'd been the first person ever to trust me with a hint of something adult and serious, and I'd die if she ever found out that I had reacted like a child.

The double layer of secrets, Jake's and mine, feel like a third person walking between us, a humanoid shadow like the gaps that cut me and Jake out of Alice's visions. I feel like I should point to that layer of secrets when he offers me a penny for my thoughts.

"Nothing important," I say instead, offering a watery smile.

Our secrets probably have a lot to do with our decision to run, not drive, to La Push. You can be quiet when you run without the silence being awkward.

I tense up when I hear the sound of surf pounding against rock, wondering if I'll ever be able to have fun at the seaside again. Seth's final scream is echoing through my mind, taking a toll on my near-vampiric grace.

My shaky legs collapse underneath me when a real scream shatters the quiet. A splash, seeming to echo the scream a fraction of a second later, turns up the volume on the white noise of my panic.

"That idiot," Jake snarls, clasping my arms to keep me from falling. He sits down in the grass and lowers me carefully onto his lap, cocooning me in his arms and resting his chin on top of my head.

"Don't worry, sweetheart, it's just the guys having fun. Quil is such a drama queen…can't jump into the kiddie pool without screaming bloody murder."

He looks tenderly into my eyes, cradling my neck in his hot, broad hands. When I smile to say I'm okay, he turns his head to shout over his shoulder.

"You scared my girl half to death, you a--er, _butt_-face. What the eff are people gonna assume if they hear you scream like a girl when you jump?"

"Hey, hey, no harm intended." A dripping Quil jogs toward us, palming surrender. "I'm really sorry I scared you, Nessie. I should have…I wasn't thinking."

"That's okay," I tell him, feeling pleasantly surprised that I mean it. I wiggle out of Jake's grasp, hoping to salvage my dignity pronto. "I'm old enough to know what 'what the eff' means, by the way."

"Doesn't matter how old she is," Quil says with a debonair wink. "You don't cuss in front of a lady." For some reason, Quil's comment gets an eyebrow raise from Jake.

"C'mon," Quil wheedles in response to the silent challenge. "There's gotta be a loophole for if the 'lady' cusses like a sailor. Cusses you out from inside your own freaking head, I might add." Quil shakes his head as if to expel at few lingering insults. "How is it, anyway, having your pack buddy back in town?"

"Kinda strange…" Jake answers.

I realize with a jolt that Quil just called Leah a 'lady' in air quotes. I wish I could tell them not to say stuff like that without sounding like a prissy little kid. Esme always sounds so _correct_ when defending Leah, but I'll never look grown up like Esme, not if I live for a thousand years.

"I thought it might be nice, you know--" Jake goes on with no further eyebrow raises, "--to talk to her face to face, be like people-friends again. But talking in person…I dunno. We've been in each other's heads for crying out loud, but the drifting apart thing still happened."

"And that's, uh, a bad thing?"

"C'mon Quil, Leah's not that bad. I just wish she'd stop freaking avoiding me all the time."

"What d'you mean, avoiding you all the time?"

"She hasn't been in my head for a week. She used to go wolf for eight-odd hours a day, and now it's like she's going cold turkey."

"Damn, that must itch."

"I know, right? Maybe she wants to grieve in private or something, but keeping stuff private is effing exhausting. She knows how much I loved Seth, how bad I miss him. Why wouldn't she want to feel that stuff in front of me?" Jake sounds so hurt underneath the bravado in his voice that I take his hand and squeeze it. He squeezes back harder and tucks a curl behind my ear, brushing his knuckles tenderly across my skin. "Maybe she doesn't wanna be in _my_ mind right now. Not when my girl is making me so darn happy. I know Leah's had a hard time of it, but I still thought she'd still be happy for me, you know? Happy that something went right in my life for a change?"

Quil snorts. "Leah, be happy for somebody else? Bro, happiness with her is a zero sum deal. How else d'you explain how she feels about…" He clears his throat and frowns at me like he's in on these godawful secrets. "…about guys who are, uh, taken. Didn't you say she threw a fit about Seth, like her brother finally found someone and all she could do was be jealous?"

"Yeah…," Jake says, looking just slightly uneasy about agreeing with Quil. I feel like smacking both of them, but I just pocket my hands like a coward. Anyone can tell how much Leah loved Seth, how she's _so_ not the type to want other people to be sad whenever she is.

"Holy shit--er, _shiest_ Jake! It's her thing for guys who are taken!"

"Uh, Quil? You think Leah's avoiding me cuz she wants to jump my bones? _Now_, after seven years of being in my head all the time?"

"But it totally makes sense! Think about it: one day, your princess finally wakes up to smell the hottie. The next day, Ms. Career Third Wheel can't stand to be in your head anymore." Quil shakes his head, grinning like he's just cured cancer or something. "That twisted bitch. Now that somebody better than her wants you, she has to want you too."

I finally have some evidence about how freaking wrong Quil is. Too bad it's secret evidence that I have to keep to myself. _Show me Jacob Black_, Leah had hissed at me through the rain, at a time when she knew that I didn't know how I felt about Jake at all. Could it really be true that she loves Jake but thinks he should be with me? The thought makes me so angry that I can't think straight, like when I learned about how white people stole so much from the Quileutes' ancestors.

It's easy to see, in retrospect, that I _do_ belong to Jake; that nothing less could come close to repaying how he's devoted himself to guiding me. Jake belonging to me, on the other hand, seems unjust and untruthful, like my family buying food to throw away when people are starving in Africa.

"Does Leah really love you?" I ask Jake once Quil has left. I'm staggered by what Leah did for us, by what it must have cost her. Why didn't I see right away that she knows and loves Jake better than I can? The thing I can't figure out is why she thought she was helping Jake…how could Leah want Jake to be with someone who had to be taught that she loved him? Who's working her butt off trying to understand him a tenth as well as Leah does?

"Don't be jealous, sweetheart." Jake wraps his arms around me, but not before his grin tells me that he's perfectly fine with the jealousy. "Do you honestly think she could hold a candle to you?"

Jake acts completely stunned when I stiffen and push him away. "Why do you and Quil talk so fucking horribly behind Leah's back?" My first-ever cuss word kicks me with a hard jolt of adrenaline, adding fizz to the anger that's been building up slowly inside of me. "You've been in her fucking head, and you don't even _try_ to understand who she is!" I draw a shaky breath and press on while I still can. "You're amazing to me and awful to her and she still gets you better than I do. Does that mean that the real Jacob is Quil's awful Jacob, and my Jacob is just…just an act, or something?"

"Nessie, I--I love you. I promise that that's never been an act." I'm pretty sure that my tirade came out in a whiny little girl voice, but Jake's voice is shaking as if I actually sounded credible. "Being with the wolves, you get used to not thinking before you say stuff. That's no excuse though…God, Nessie, you shouldn't have had to hear that."

My teary eyes rake the coastline, trying to avoid Jake's panicked eyes. The grey clouds and water remind me of a different shade of grey, the grey of a wolf who always seems to start running away when she sees me. As if on cue, that other grey flashes out at me from the forest that edges the Rez, like that Waldo guy you can never see until you focus on what he looks like.

"I can't go see Charlie and Sue right now," I mumble as if to the trees. "Tell them I'm sorry, and that I'll come see them tomorrow."

_~Leah~_

I cannot fucking believe it when they head for the woods instead of the cars. Every one of my wolfy genes is screaming to get expressed, but I can't do a think about that 'til Jake goes where he can't phase. I run as a human, just outside smell range, 'til they head out of the woods toward Mom's. I should have waited longer, really, but at some point my paranoia stops being a match for my freaky needs.

I pop half of my shirt buttons in my hurry to get the thing off. My pants survive, thank God, but my bra gets blown to smithereens. By that time though, the mutt genes have worked their magic and I couldn't care less about the silly stuff. I have an hour, maybe two, to run like the freak I am, and there's no way in hell I'm wasting it.

Sadly, I can't count on Jake staying with Mom for too long enough. I shouldn't really be doing this when he's still in La Push, period…sadly, I don't think Jake ever hangs with anyone outside the wolf loop. I lope back in the direction of my excuse for a pile of clothes, missing my wolf form before I've even left it.

I drink in a last olfactory hurrah and choke on the scent of flowers. Flowers that don't grow anywhere near La Push. It smells like a leech except that it doesn't burn my nose, the difference between a perfume bottle and a girl who sweats Chanel. A puny inner voice screams that the scent is fucking dangerous, but it never had a chance in hell against the way my whole body is relaxing. It only gets stronger, in a way, when I phase and the background smells all fade away.

My six-year-old tormenter is lying with her toes pointed to the sky, occasionally flicking them down to point to the tree where I stashed what I was wearing.

I rush to pull on my pants and shirt before she can turn around, jerking my buttonless front closed so hard that I hear a side seam split. Jamming my feet into my shoes, I let the momentum spin me halfway around. Smooth, except when try to run away and find I've been caught by the elbows.

I break the grip by spinning myself the rest of the way around, a move that puts me face to face with Chanel Sweat herself. Her hands are oh-so-innocently clasped, like they wouldn't know a death grip if they saw one.

"Don't go, Leah. I--I needed to see you. Please?"

I can't quite place what's different about her now, maybe 'cause everything is different. This girl is starting to know what she's about, or fake it like the rest of us anyway.

She sits down on a log and folds her hands carefully in her lap. I can tell she's afraid that I'm about to ignore her and make a run for it, but she's doing a pretty good job of acting all calm and in control. Part of me hates that she's learning to lie without opening her mouth, but at least it'll give her one up on those lying parental assholes.

I sit at the far end of Nessie's old log, trying not to look her way. Too bad that every one of my pores is reacting to the air that's touched her.

Her scent is still making my nose tingle like crazy, so I close my eyes to center myself. Then I feel a sharper tingle that stretches from by hand heel to pinky tip. I look down to see Nessie's hand lying flat on the log next to mine.

She draws her hand away again, and I should die for how empty that makes me feel inside. But then she moves it toward me, palm up, to offer me a scruff of star moss.

"Will you teach me how to look at this? Really look, I mean?"

I see in her eyes that she wants something else, something she's afraid to ask me. I'll bet that the moss means something different to her than it meant to me this morning, but I'm not about to beg her to tell me what that something is.

"For fuck's sake; it's a piece of moss."

She holds the moss at arm's length, copying my pose from earlier. She stays to still to breathe for a while, then sighs and gives it up, pouting as she folds her hand around the little moss sprig. I usually hate it when people pout, but I'm mesmerized as hell by this face, so much so that I don't even notice when her hand starts moving toward my cheek.

I do notice when her skin touches mine and the pictures of Jake start coming, breezing through my head at flipbook speed like a hulk from a silent movie. The stream stops at a few old stills of Jake looking pained and frustrated.

"He better not look like that ever again," I tell her. "I'd kick his ungrateful ass."

"What does he have to be grateful for? I was such a stupid kid, Leah…I didn't see how things were changing between us, and I made him sad for so long. Tell me the truth--am I still not seeing him right? I just want people to tell me stuff so I can know how not to hurt them."

She twirls the star moss between her thumb and forefinger. "Even little things like moss…you see them so much better than I do."

"Forest service, remember?" Trying to lighten the mood, I touch the waxy red fiber that protrudes from the top of the moss. We shiver when our fingers brush together around the moss. "Look--this part is the sporophyte, the stalk that makes spores. It's the part that evolved into a tree, after a while. The rest of the moss, the gametophyte? Evolved into a fucking pollen grain."

Nessie pokes at the sporophyte thoughtfully, brushing a nail from the base to the capsule. "D'you think it was destined to be a tree all along?"

"I--er, highly doubt it."

"Yeah, me too. Carlisle and my dad don't think stuff like that could happen by chance…Alice says they're full of it, though. That no one would believe intelligence and design were that special if they could see what a mess their decisions make of the future all the time."

"I'll bet _that_ debate was something."

"_Definitely_ something." She grins, remembering. My permanent headache lets up, watching her, 'til the grin falls flatter than an angel food cake gone wrong. "Mom and Dad and Carlisle talk about destiny quite a bit. Last week, Mom told me that--" She gives me a petrified look--_Why?_ "--that she thinks of me and Jake that way. That fate made her and Jake stay friends, or something, 'cause he had to be around to fall for me. It made me feel bad for Jake, like it wasn't a good enough reason to stay friends 'cause she liked hanging out with him and stuff."

Hmm… wonder how much she knows about her mom and Jake 'hanging out' pre-imprint. But the more pressing question is why she looked at me like that, like I'm some kind of fucking saint who's been as good as stoned to death. _Jesus…could she _know_ what she does to me?_

"I love Jake," she whispers, like she's trying to say, _I'm sorry_. "I know that now, and I know he loves me. But I'm still so young, Leah…I still don't understand anything. He deserves someone who knows enough to treat him right, you know? Who doesn't have to be taught to see what he needs, who he is? It doesn't seem right to say we were destined to be anything. Not when he should've done so much better."

She blushes bright red at my slow, resounding "Bullshit."

"What? I thought you didn't buy that destiny crap either."

I grin in spite of myself. "Guess you got me there, kid." I'll get myself into trouble if I open the Jake-doing-so-much-better can of worms. "Hell…it's not like I want to think I was 'destined' to end up like _this_. 'Waste of potential' has a nice ring to it, I think."

"How can you say that, Leah?"

"Now who's going back on not buying that destiny crap?"

"I mean…" she blushes magenta. "How could you think you're a waste? Of anything?"

She gapes while I sit there and ponder how to count the ways. But Devil Spawn can never seem to stay speechless for long.

"Leah…please. I want to try something," she whispers, reaching for my face when I don't say no.

She shows me a picture that's different from anything else I've seen in her mind. The scene is an ordinary glade of Olympic old growth forest, but somehow I see bits of Nessie everywhere we look. The decay looks more alive than dead, through her eyes, like the moss is just chilling with the trees instead of slowly ripping holes in the wood.

At first I think Nessie's falling asleep when the forest blurs to black. But the abstract haunted wood that's left is definitely still her.

I begin to think that I'm missing something when our eyes don't adjust to the dark. The moon is new, but we should be able to see the stars.

The camera pans away from the sky, and that's when I see a blur. A streak of speed that comes equipped with its own personal spotlight. I know that it's me before I know that it's a wolf; from some angles, all you can see is a signature kind of movement.

I can't really tell if I'm pretty since there's nothing around for comparison. I can't even tell if I'm happy or sad. Somehow, though, I stop wanting to be anything other than _this_.

I want that emotional limbo back when the Leah-blur retreats. Nessie's fingers stiffen on my face, like she's trying to get control of what she's showing me, and the whole scene definitely takes a turn toward the sad.

I feel my cheekbone bruise when the Leah-blur disappears. We're shaking now, trapped in darkness 'til I pry away her fingers and wrap my arms around her. My nipple hardens against the fabric of her shirt as my own shirt starts to fall open, but I can't stand letting her go for the fucking second it would take to cover up. It's like we're huddling for warmth in an arctic emotional wasteland, broken now that the Leah-blur is gone.

"I can't stay here. You know that right?" I whisper into Nessie's ear. She nods, looking up with eyes that sparkle in a way I can relate to.

* * *

A/N: Two celebrity credits are in order: The (possibly corny :o) chapter title was taken from Michael Pollan's eponymous book, which I love. You may also recognize "wake up and smell the hottie" from Buffy TVS Season 2.

Sorry if you missed hanging with Eddie, Bella, and Angela. They'll be back next time, most definitely. As always, I'd appreciate your honest thoughts on how this is all turning out!

BTW, was anyone else sad that the meadow scenes in Twilight mentioned zero sexy plants? That is,…*shuts up before y'all think better of reading the crazy girl's story*


	7. Like Mother, Like Daughter

A/N: Thank you, SecretlySeverus and Reamhar, for another super-illuminating beta job. As always, thank you to everyone who is sticking with this story, particularly those who take the time to review week after week. It's soooo much fun for me to hear how your thoughts on my story are developing…we still have a long way to go, and I hope you like the new installment. Yay for Stephanie Meyer letting me take you all on this wacky (and unprofitable) idea trip!

_" "I have nothing to make me miserable," she said, getting calmer; "but can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all?" " --_Tolstoy, _Anna Karenina_

_~Renesmee~_

The fiasco of meeting Angela's mom did a lot for my social confidence. Angela was embarrassed; she assumed that her mom had shocked me, implying that she saw me as a nice girl from a family that behaved pretty normally.

Relieved of the worry that she'd think my parents were weird beyond belief, I nevertheless had a lot of freaky quirks left to worry about. Maybe my too-hot skin would make her think I was hiding a case of ebola, or maybe she'd find it bizarre that I never got paper cuts while reading. Then there was the minor detail of my having made up my whole life's story. My memory made it unlikely that she would catch me in a lie outright, but my anecdotes might ring fake like Edward's cheesy pseudorandom "sex hair."

The one thing I never really worried about was being a freak because of what I ate. Sure, I worried that I knew too little about human food, but not about the fact that I preferred to hunt live animals. Not until Angela showed up to our coffee date with two colors of post-its and a favor to ask.

Ninety minutes later, we're lounging on her bed skimming Quileute origin myths. Angela is skimming, rather, meaning that I can get away with speed-reading. As I read, I run my thumb along the slim plastic lip of the post-it holder, idly clipping it to the collar of my shirt instead of the cover of my book. The post-it holder feel like the official badge of a graduate student, a token that turns spying on people into something legit and scholarly.

Fingering the badge the way I've seen Charlie play with his, I pretend that I'm hungry but not starving, ignoring the mention of deer with a sniff that turns seamlessly up into disdain. But wait…the next story title is wafting something _else_ up my nose. _K'wa''iti_ _kills the wolf chief_. Hmm…better read this one carefully.

I unclip my post-it badge and let it hover about the page like a divining rod. A heroic predator should be marked with green; a villainous predator with red, thereby tiling the tribal stories with a foundation for Angela's thesis.

The story is pretty strange…I can't really make out the point, much less a colorable hero or villain. The wolf chief gets killed because he's hogging natural resources, but then the blue jays cry like they miss having him eat their eggs or something. All I know is that it sure is creepy when _K'wa''iti_ puts on the wolf skin.

I settle for marking each instance of "wolf" with a post-it of its own, making sure to choose red at least a third of the time. Sneaking a glance at Angela, I'm relieved to see that she's used a lot of each color.

"What do you think is the answer, Ang? I mean, about whether they're villains."

She shrugs. "My undergrad adviser said you shouldn't write a thesis on something where you think you know the answers. You'll interpret things wrong, or get disappointed, or both."

"What do you think for yourself, I mean, if you don't know for sure about the Quileutes?"

"Well, I thought of this topic because my boyfriend's vegetarian. He's kind of self-righteous about it, and I go back and forth on how much to agree with him."

My ears prick up at the mention of the word 'vegetarian.' I think this is the first time I've heard it used un-ironically. "About vegetarians," I say, practicing nonchalance, "what would you think of a predator that tried to become one?"

"They'd be heroic for sure, right?"

"But what if they only wished they were vegetarian? Like, they'd die without eating meat, so they settle for killing less often or something. Eating stupider animals."

"Hmm, sounds different from being a vegetarian for real. The thing that gets me about Ben--he's a vegan, actually--is that he and his friends think that going partway is worthless. I mean, it would cut animal suffering in half if people ate half as much meat, but in his mind it's more of a good versus evil thing. Vegetarians are innocent and everyone else is guilty, period. So if a predator tried to be good, but it still had to hunt and kill things? Calling it a vegetarian would put it in the evil camp, for sure. Because you're saying that its nature is evil, and it can't ever give up that evil completely."

Angela frowns in sympathy with the expression on my face. I can tell she's trying to figure me out, and I hope I haven't said too much.

"I'm sorry," she says at last with a tentative little smile. "You must be pretty bored with helping me. I always seem to take on these huge, boring jobs, and my friends have to suffer for it. Did Bella ever tell you how many graduation invitations she addressed for me?"

"No…" I say, ashamed that Bella doesn't talk about humans she isn't related to.

"Oh, thank goodness." Angela shakes her head. "That was a worse job than this one, if you can believe it. I had a nice time talking to Bella, though." She smiles with a faraway look that makes me feel extremely young. "You know how it is when you're eighteen years old and boys are this bottomless mystery."

"You talked about Edward?" _Remember the nonchalance, Nessie_. "And, um Ben?"

She nods, "Jacob too, actually." I frown at her and jump when she claps a hand over her mouth. "Oh God! You know about Jacob and Bella, right?"

"Yeah Ang, I know." I don't tell her that, as a matter of fact, I've known for a whole twelve hours.

Jake might not have told me at all if I hadn't lost my temper in La Push. Who knew that a little self-righteous shouting could accomplish so much so fast? He left me several messages after we parted on the beach, but they sounded like messages from a boyfriend, not a warden. His wrongness and caddishness featured front and center and he never even mentioned my curfew.

He wanted to take me out on an apology date to the movies, but we ended up staying close to home. Normally movies are my favorite, but I wanted to walk in the woods just then. I'd spent the morning at the bookstore with Angela, reading about plant evolution, and I wanted to search for some of the plants I'd been studying, memorizing the nicest ones to show to Leah later. _She's leaving, stupid,_ growled a voice at the back of my mind. _You'll never get a chance to show her anything ever again_. But the lazy whorls of leaves were just soothing enough to help me to keep that voice in check.

I thought about plants and Leah and--goddammit, focus on the plants!--while I walked arm in arm with Jake by the river on our property. It was nice to feel him pulling me back from the abyss of what I couldn't afford to feel.

"What did you do this morning?" I asked him, the abyss looming much too close for comfort.

"I went to see Leah, actually," he told me, grimacing and shaking his head. "You're right, Ness…I might not always get how Leah's mind works, but all that drama she causes…it definitely hurts her worse than anybody else. Quil and I were being A-holes for acting like she makes life hard for us on purpose. So I went and told her it's okay if she wants her privacy. We'll draw up a schedule and phase at different times; we're old enough that neither of us should have trouble sticking to the plan. She can go wherever she wants this way, try to move on again, you know?"

"What did she say?" I asked with a dry mouth.

He shrugged. "Didn't deny that she wanted privacy. But I might've reconsidered the plan if I knew she wanted to go back to the Yukon. I'm sorta helping Leah get out of town again, and Sue's gonna kill me when she finds out."

He was starting to make me feel queasy, and I knew we needed to change the subject. Luckily, Jake was thinking along similar lines, not having gotten to the topic that he was working up the nerve to bring up. "I really need to thank you for being honest with me and calling me out when I was wrong. That must have taken a lot of courage."

I wrinkled my nose at the idea that I'd been brave. The outburst had felt inevitable, a simple Newtonian reaction to his action. But his words and his voice sounded so nice and reverent that I couldn't protest out loud.

"I've been a scared-y-cat compared to you, Ness," he went on, "and I feel like crap about it now. I wanna tell you some things that I've been scared to have you know…you shouldn't have to hear them from someone else later, so I'm just gonna tell you now, okay?"

Now that I'm face to face with Angela's horror at nearly having said too much, I wouldn't put it past Alice to have spurred Jake on with some kind of warning. At the time I just nodded, my thinking drowned out by the pounding of my heart.

"It's not really that big a deal," Jake hedged, dashing my hopes of striking gold. "See, your mom and I had kind of a thing back in high school. Just for a few months, when she was broken up with your dad."

Huh. This is pretty random. "What do you mean, a 'thing'?"

"She loved me; I loved her; she loved your dad more. Awkward as hell at their wedding, but things were fine by the time you were born."

"Um, wow. Okay."

After a bit of a pause, Jake's voice came back with a tinge of panic. "Please, Ness, tell me what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking…eww?"

"Look at it this way. At least your bf's only old flame is happily off the market."

"Jake, um, I'm glad you told me, but…eww?" _Nonchalance, Nessie, nonchalance_, I screamed to myself, hoping a cool reaction would encourage future confessions. I was grateful that he looked like he wouldn't mind at all if I changed the subject straightaway.

"When is Leah going back to Canada?"

"In two days. I'm dropping her off at the bus stop."

Jake's confession weirded me out enough that I headed to my own room that night. He looked like a hurt puppy dog when I wished him sweet dreams, and I hoped I could get over this soon.

I burrowed under my covers with _Anna Karenina_, desperate to get lost in its labyrinthine plot. By morning, the pages were rumpled beneath my cheek. My neck hurt like a bitch, but at least I hadn't dreamed about Jake kissing Bella.

Trying to remember what I _had_ dreamed about, I got quickly snarled up in familiar Russian names. My unconscious had carved up the plot of the novel and made a few mistakes trying to put it back together, Anna falling in love with Kitty instead of with Vronsky and not dying at the end like she was supposed to. Someone else had died in her place, weirdly enough: Levin, the guy who's supposed to live happily ever after. Marrying Kitty after trying and failing to court her two older sisters.

I tried to remember how Kitty had felt about accepting a guy her sisters had rejected. She seemed too proud to mention it, even to the narrator, which definitely meant that it bugged her. Still, it didn't escape me that she'd gotten everything she ever wanted while her sister ended up cheated on and Anna ended up dead.

Maybe Bella's "being friends with Jacob" was the best thing she could have done for me, preparing Jake to be my perfect match before I was even born. She knows that we're made for each other because she was the one doing the making, letting Jake crave her flesh and blood and creating me to satisfy that need.

_But she could have just taken him for herself_, an inner voice nagged, backing the rest of my mind into a corner. Instead, Bella had chosen to renounce her family and her species. She'd given up sunlight, the taste of ice cream, and, as far as she knew, motherhood…none of it could make up the difference between Jake and Edward, in her mind.

_I_ am one of the things that could never compete with her love for her husband. Is _that_ why she thinks that the man she rejected is good enough for me? I've had twelve whole hours to get used to what Jake told me, but part of me is still thrown enough to want to pack a bag and take off. A certain greyhound that's leaving in two days' time could put thousands of miles between me and Bella's schemes, taking me up north to a new country full of new experiences and…yes, new feelings. Feelings that I can't possibly ignore any longer.

I still can't believe that my mother, of all people, was once in love with two people at once. As jarring as that is, it makes it easy to believe that the same thing has somehow happened to me. Jacob is a part of me, but Leah sets me on fire, and I can't process how much it'll hurt if she leaves me behind for good. I'll never feel this again, and I'm not ready for it to be over, not so soon.

I called Angela this morning because I _had_ to have a distraction. I had to stop thinking about Leah because I can't let that part of me win. Last time we saw each other, we agreed without words that we're stronger than the force we feel between us. We both love Jake desperately, and we could never do anything to hurt him.

My family would never be the same again if I decided to break Jacob's heart; it would be no different from what Bella did when she left Renee and Charlie for Edward. I'd probably hate myself like Anna did when adultery got her son and her whole world taken away from her. I decided where I stood on love before the funeral when my head was clear, and I _will not_ be a hypocrite now that things are getting complicated. I _will not_ get stuck in the trap of vegetarian vampire ethics, beating myself up for being an evil, evil creature and taking that as license to indulge in a few choice 'slip-ups.'

A cool hand on my arm reminds me that I'm still in Angela's room, probably doing a good impression of Edward looking tortured.

"Nessie, talk to me. Are you okay?" She asks with a tremor in her voice. "I'm usually more discreet, I promise. It slipped out; I don't know what I was thinking."

"Ange, it's okay, I don't want you to be all careful with me." My voice is shaky too, but hopefully tells her I mean what I'm saying.

"Alright," she says doubtfully. "You gave me a bit of déjà vu just now…I always worried about saying the wrong things in front of Bella when we hung out. She and Edward were really private about their relationship, and it was hard not to make her uncomfortable while everyone talked about what they were doing after high school. I thought they might grow out of it, but they seemed more guarded than ever at the funeral, like they preferred didn't want to talk about the last six years at all."

"I don't want to be like that, Ange, I promise. Bella and Edward do really like their privacy, and it's a pain in the butt for me to, you know, make sure I don't say anything they wouldn't want me to say."

Angela's face softens a little, making me think that my deflection is working. It would be awesome if I could get away with blaming my evasiveness on other people's secrets.

"See, Jake told me about his thing with Bella in high school, but I don't really know what to make of it." My stomach lurches with shame, and I realize I don't want to talk about this, not even with Angela. "It weirded me out a little, but it also made me feel like there are worse things Jake doesn't know about me." Okay, this started out as a defection and got confessional really fast. I lean forward, preparing to whisper something I've never said out loud before. "Like, I'm starting to think that I, um, like girls, and I don't know how big of a problem that is." To my surprise, I feel a weight lift off my shoulders. Angela and I now share a secret of our own, a counterweight to all the things I'm not allowed to tell her.

"Like, you _only_ like girls? That sounds like a pretty big problem, potentially…"

"No, um, I think I like both. Some people like both, right?" I probably sound like such a small-town girl, but it isn't like the vampire world has much of a sexual counterculture. All of my knowledge about girls liking girls comes from a few quick Google searches that I purged from my browser history at once.

"As long as you like both, it shouldn't be a bit deal, right? Don't some guys find that--" She turns crimson. "--sexy?"

"Hmm, no idea about the sexy part. I'm just afraid he'll get the wrong idea if I say something right after getting with him, you know? Like, being with him is making me realize that I want something else?" Voicing that idea makes my stomach flip, and I pinch the side of my knee to punish my body for the reaction.

"I'm not sure that hiding it from him is the way to keep him from being insecure. If a guy starts thinking that you're trying to spare his feelings, he'll make up his own reasons to be insecure, worse reasons than what you're trying to hide."

"Yeah." I'm quickly losing my enthusiasm for this topic. "I should get going." I grab my bag and follow through before I can read to much into the new concern on Angela's face.

It's only mid-afternoon when I get home. Hours and hours before I can attempt to sleep and forget. Thank God for the huge stack of must-reads Angela lent me.

"Sweetheart, you're home," calls Bella from the cottage garden, straightening up and walking slowly toward me. "Did you have fun at Angela's house?"

"Hi Mom. Yeah, it was great," I say as I hug her, trying to spruce up my voice a bit.

Before I can head inside, Edward purposefully exits the house. "Hello, love," he tells me, kissing my cheeks and slipping an arm around Bella's waist. They're standing squarely between me and the door, Edward looking tenderly down at Bella. Stern encouragement is shining through the sweetness in his eyes, and I brace myself for what they've apparently been planning.

"Renesmee, honey," Bella addresses the floor. I was certainly much closer to the floor in stature the last time anyone called me that name. "I was wondering-- um, your father and I thought that you might want to talk about what Jake told you yesterday."

Oh _Christ_, no.

"Uh, thanks for offering, Mom, Dad, but I'm good." I _am_ a bit pissed that they hid this from me for so long, but calling them out would involve mentioning what, in fact, they hid from me, something I absolutely refuse to do. It's humiliating enough that I failed at nonchalant thoughts and Edward is now looking sorry for me.

"Glad to hear that you're 'good,' sweetie," Bella addresses my knees, "but Jake is afraid that you're upset with him, so I thought…you might want to talk," she repeats lamely.

"I'm not mad at Jake, Mom. I'm going with him to the bus station tomorrow, remember?" So does she actually care whether I am, in fact, upset, or just about the effect my feelings might have on her precious little plans? "Honestly, it's not a big deal."

There _is_ one jab I think I can deliver without losing more pride. "I like the way Jake is starting to tell me important things, you know? It's a brand new feeling, having someone love me enough to do that."

Edward takes a second to cradle Bella's cheek, wiping an invisible tear from her lashes. When he speaks, it's to me, though he only turns partly away from her.

"Darling, I'm glad that Jacob is showing you a new kind of love. When you're a mother someday, you're going to discover still more kinds of love. Until then, please trust that you are everything to your mother and me. Don't you see that we were right to keep this from you until you were ready to understand?"

Edward doesn't seem eager to stir up the ghost of his wife's love for Jacob, but I have no way of knowing how long his reluctance will hold out. A couple of smiley excuses later, I'm shut up in my room gripping a book for dear life. For the sake of both the wolves I love, I must forget the one I cannot have.

A/N: I wanted to spend a little quality time with each of my heroines alone again, as it's hard for them to reflect on things when they're busy dazzling each other :-p We all need to rest up and get ready for the drama of the next time they meet. Please review if you liked, got confused, or just want to say hi!


	8. Taking Responsibility

A/N: This chapter parallels the last one, with lots of reflection on a central flashback. Brought to you in a hopefully digestible form with help from some truly awesome betas. Thx Reamhar and SecretlySeverus! 3 As always, feel free to ask me about anything that's confusing. Thank you for reading and reviewing!

I own my attempts to be all literary with this fic, but the characters belong to the more structurally sensible Stephanie Meyer. (Did I mention that I'm branching out into tongue twister writing?) Hope you enjoy :)

"But in the end it wasn't up to me. The big things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we're born." --Jeffrey Eugenides, _Middlesex_

_~Leah~_

A would-be-prodigal daughter could do worse than come home to La Push. Chances are that gloomy weather will hint at how awful she feels. I, for one, am soaked through when my mom opens the door, my clothes dripping an insistent, pathetic "I'm sorry" onto the doorstep. In doing so, they're way more articulate than my mouth could ever be…what the fuck can you _say_ to a mom you up and abandoned when she needed you?

The other perk of my bedraggled state is that Mom has to shut me up in the bathroom. It's easy for her to show she cares by getting me towels and clothes, bustling around and putting off the moment when she has to figure out if she can forgive me. All too soon, however, I'm cocooned in blankets on the couch. A cup of slow-brewed ginger tea steams up from between my hands. I have no more physical needs that my mom can mindlessly address, and the weight of that fact has her sinking heavily into a chair. I try to take care that my "thank you" shines through my eyes, and take a deep breath to say…something less fucking inadequate.

Before I can make a sound, Mom gets up and steps around the coffee table to join me. Embracing me with one arm, she touches her free hand to my lips.

"Not now…you don't have to," she chokes out in a whisper. "I'm so glad you're here, and I know you can't stay for long. I just want to pretend. For tonight."

"Don't worry, Mom, I'm not going back. There's nothing up north for me now." I laugh nervously. "Not sure there ever was, really. _Fuck_ I've been an idiot."

The look in her eyes is fucking breaking my heart. It's sure as hell no more than I deserve, but I close my eyes like the weakling I am. There's no getting away from thinking about Mom's pain though, pain that I caused by skipping town without a backward glance. I literally snuck out in the middle of the night without bothering to say goodbye.

I shudder at the memory of Jake and Nessie seeing me off, framed by the doorway of the bus with barely a millimeter of space between their bodies. The tiniest random movements were enough to force his hard ribs flush against her curves, and whenever that space between them clamped shut, it was like a vise clamping down on my brain. The vise was enough to squeeze Mom right out of my head, along with every thought except that I _had_ to stop feeling this way. I had to get away from what I wasn't allowed to have, desires that were about as useless as wishing for glitzier super powers.

I forced myself to remember how I'd gotten over the Sam and Emily thing: moving away, pretending it wasn't real, surrounding myself with people who didn't know werewolves from the Wizard of Oz. I told myself it should be easy, in comparison, to get over a natural-born enemy.

Nothing about what I was doing seemed easy, sadly, while the bus was pulling away. The shit I'd left behind didn't get any less real with distance; if anything, the distance gave me a clearer view of my loss. I was definitely aware, at that point, of leaving a mom who was falling apart; I felt like I couldn't have done otherwise, but that didn't do much for the guilt. More puzzling was my regret that I'd have to lose touch with Jake. Despite the insanity of my feelings for his girl, a part of me was sad to be leaving the friend she'd made so happy. You can't knock the reflected glow of seeing a friend find love after so long; even if that love happens to cut off your breath like a sucker-punch, a little of the buzz in your oxygen-starved brain is excitement that the world does things right sometimes. Like, if _Jake_ could end up happy, then Leah _definitely_ had to be next. At the moment though, I was nothing but a cop-out. A girl who was running away from everyone she'd ever cared about, proving that her last six years of loneliness weren't a fluke.

To steady my nerves, I looked out the window and whispered the names of the trees. At first, their diversity kept my memory working full-tilt, but soon my chant turned repetitious. I was counting perfect Christmas-tree spruces ten, then twenty at a time. The sharp scent of resin carried easily through the bus's air filter, and I knew we were getting close to my boreal forest sanctuary.

I got off at the station in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory and ran at a human clip in a direction I knew well, navigating through the unvarying trees by muscle memory alone. I took a scenic route, being in no hurry to get anywhere.

Out of habit, I scanned for trees with hazardously big, loose limbs, jotting down the locations of any that might fall on the two people who live here. A few trees had fallen already, probably because no ranger had come this way in ages. No one had seen that these trees might fall or heard the noise when they did, and I firmly believe that an unheard tree fall does not, in fact, make a sound. These huge, crashing events had gotten absorbed by the oblivion of the Yukon, and I'd come back here in hopes that the forest would absorb my pain the same way.

The resiny smell of the forest did a lot to calm me down, like a smell-static that kept my nose from bugging me with every little detail. The little things that only wolves can smell have a way of triggering random memories, but the only memories that the resin could bring to the surface were safe scenes from the past six years.

This piney smell-cocoon was just what I needed at the moment, and it was beyond annoying when a different smell started itching at my nose. I tried to breathe through my mouth and ignore it, but it was too late to stop a new flow of smell-triggered memories. The smell brought me back to when I would steal from the eighth grade art supply cabinet, filching special pencils that stained my fingers and clothes pitch black. Shy little Leah drew charcoal still lifes when she was in class, but came home to lock her bedroom door and render what truly excited her: the face of the studly high school boy who should've been the first of many teeny-bopper obsessions. Maybe if my nosy brother hadn't blabbed to Sam about the drawings, I would've gotten over him and had a girl crush a long time ago.

The thought of an earlier girl crush sat rather badly with me inside, and I kicked a rock to punish myself for being happy that Nessie had been the one to awaken those feelings in me.

It took me embarrassingly long to wonder what exactly had triggered the memory; yes, I was actually puzzled as to why a forest would smell like charcoal. I'd worked as a ranger for six fucking years without really stopping to think about why the trees here are so young and perfect.

Certain evergreen cones are designed to open only when flambéed, to chill out with their seeds locked up until fire clears a nice piece of land. The result is a forest that has the moronic beauty of youth, a grove that would rather burn to the ground than risk getting old and gnarly. Kind of like a girl who'll look twenty-five forever and aspires to act even younger. Who abandons old relationships when they start to make life hard, preferring to live where she's nobody and can deny any memories that matter to her.

The burnt smell got stronger until I couldn't breathe without choking. I knew I should turn around, but I tried to plow on anyway. The pain seemed like a fitting punishment for how hypocritical I'd been acting, pretending I hated not aging while doing my best to forget the years I'd lived. I knew it wasn't normal to take rejection the way I that did, running for fucking thousands of miles when I couldn't have who I wanted. Maybe it had been a curse in disguise to fall in love so young… I'd lost Sam without having been spurned by someone less important, and it had killed me like smallpox had killed my poorly immunized ancestors.

Now history was repeating itself because I hadn't had the balls to deal the first time. I'd put my emotions on ice instead of figuring out how to deal with them, kind of like Charlie Swan did when he stayed in love with Renee for so long. My mom swore he'd only snapped out of that when Bella broke down over Edward leaving; he couldn't get on her case with a clear conscience without dealing with his own issues first. He hadn't been strong enough to move on for the sake of his sanity, but he'd done it for his daughter's sake after eighteen fucking years.

As much as I've lost the right to say that Bella had no right to fall apart like that over a guy, I could safely say that Mom needed me now more than Bella had ever needed Charlie. I decided that I didn't want to keep running away from what hurt me, that I had to learn to stay put and deal for Mom's sake if not for my own. I sat down in the smoke-filled forest and dropped the bag I'd been carrying, noting that it was my turn to phase, not Jake's. It would be my turn for another eight hours, time to get a hundred-odd miles closer to home.

I started loping south as fast as I could with just a shirtdress in my mouth, too impatient to make things right to wait for the goddamn bus. I wasn't content to wait out the half-days we'd reserved for Jake to phase, so I slept for a few hours and then continued on on two legs. My shoeless feet started bleeding all over everything, and the pain reminded me of the little mermaid who'd put up with worse for love. My lack of a fairytale ending was no excuse for me to act like a wuss; as long as I had people who loved me and whom I loved, I needed to stand by them even if it hurt me for the rest of my life.

I won't kid myself and say that thoughts of Mom were the only thing that pushed me through the pain. I knew that Nessie belonged to Jake, but I still needed to see her again. She was the one who'd pulled the plug on my emotional freeze, making me feel things I had thought I'd never feel again. It would hurt like a bitch to see her with someone else, but dealing with that would be part of unfreezing myself, and I'd be lying if I said that part of me wasn't looking forward to the pain.

I knew I was close to home when I saw an old growth fir off in the distance. It was decrepit as hell with a Leah-sized hole in the trunk, and my stomach let me know that it still remembered trysting in places like that. I felt something else, though, that I hadn't felt before: I was happy that the tree had lived long enough to get so strange and twisted. Away from all this rain and mist, some fire would have doomed it long ago, and it never would have grown up to become this crazy work of art.

I spill half of my tea when Mom pats my knee and brings me back to the present. A knee pat is about the most sentimental gesture that we Clearwater women indulge in, and I feel duly ashamed that I almost compared my fucked up soul to art.

Snark genes ensure that I could never say that flowery shit to Mom, so I tell her how fire damage control is boring as all hell. She swats my knee with this huge grin on her face, calling me a lazy excuse for a super-powered freak.

The shift in our mood gives Charlie the emotional all-clear to come out from where he's been hiding. He gives me a hug and a kiss and then we all watch ESPN together. It kind of makes our screwed-up family feel like just a family, a _menage_ of crotchety singles who've found bizzaro love at last.

Over the next few days I try my best to atone for leaving, ferociously attacking all of my mom's least favorite chores. Okay, so maybe I'm also trying to put off figuring out what I'm going to do with my life. Mom and I start going head to head over tasks that we used to foist on Seth before; apparently her coping with grief involves a lot of chores as well.

"What in holy fuck have I been doing?" Mom announces when she opens the overstuffed freezer. Some of the food is still funerary offerings, but most of it is definitely Mom's fault. "This looks pretty serious. Like, guest china serious."

To see Charlie wince, you'd think 'guest china serious' meant six-months-to-live-type serious. He comes around pretty quickly, though, when Mom mentions Billy and Jake.

I know that seeing Jake will be key to my new not-dodging-trauma philosophy, but that doesn't mean I'm ready for it yet. Every time Jake smiles, I'll see the girl who put that smile on his face, and the part of me that can't let go of her will start a cat fight with the part of me that I'm proud of.

I get cold all over when Mom drops Jake a plus-one invite as an afterthought. Cold enough to dig out a coat I haven't needed in years; apparently even werewolves can get psychosomatic goosebumps.

I've seen enough frozen hiker remains to know that the shivering won't last, that people who are about to die of hypothermia get so hot they take off their clothes. Right on cue, I have to take off my coat as soon as it's time to set the table. As much as I know that I'm not ready to see Nessie, I'm counting the minutes 'til she gets here, my skin blazing hot with excitement.

It figures that I don't end up having to deal with the pain of seeing her. I do, however, have to deal with the news that she "felt too tired to come." As soon as Jake says that, I know that nothing would have stopped me from coming to _their_ house, that my sense of self-preservation's got nothing on this bat-shit-crazy feeling. Apparently Devil Spawn doesn't feel the same way, which makes reason ten-billion why this obsession I have is wrong.

I force myself to make eye contact with Jake, to rub my nose in his bliss as we all sit down to dinner. Watching him smile and smiling back will be step zero-point-one in Plan Get-The-Fuck-Over-Yourself, a plan that I decide to call Plan GiTFOY for short.

Plan GiTFOY grinds to a halt, sadly, when Jake won't crack a smile. He looks worse than I've ever seen him, with under-eye circles that evoke the undead. _Not undead, stupid, more like stayed up boning the undead_, hisses a voice from the pit of my stomach. _What else does _she_ have in her life that would make her too tired to come to this shindig?_

That voice nearly convinces Responsible Leah to be happy that Jake looks tired, to accept it as a sign that she might be a pretty darn talented matchmaker. But Responsible Leah, unlike Jealous Leah, is capable of logic and shit. Responsible Leah knows that Jake looks stressed as hell, that the source of that stress must be throwing her plan for a loop.

Jealous Leah is furious at Jake for having the audacity to be sad and stressed out. _When fate hands you a goddess, fucking appreciate her!_ But Responsible Leah smacks her lesser twin, disdainful, as always, of her short-sightedness. It's clear that Jake is worried about something near and dear to his heart, something that is very possibly dear to Leah's heart too.

Knowing what she does about the art of werewolf bonding, Responsible Leah takes a deep breath and makes a "rough night?" jibe at Jake. She doesn't quite hear his answer, being too busy with Jealous Leah's gag reflex, but she catches a warm, smiley "what-the-fuck-ever" that shows he's opening up already. He is putty in my hands by the time we're finished with dinner, spilling the beans in response to an offhand "What's your deal?"

"I've never seen her…dead inside like this. It's scaring the shit out of me." His eyes get as big as dinner plates, and he rubs one hand over the stubble that carpets his jawline. "It's all my fault, too…see, I told her about me and Bella. I thought it was something she should know, you know, and I was worried as fuck that it would make her hate her parents. Hate them or…or me. But she didn't get mad at either of us, she just got all sad and listless. It reminds me of--" He looks around, double-checking that the parents are out of earshot in the garden. "--of what happened to Bella. You know; back when Edward skipped town. Nessie's a better actress than Bella, but not by much…she was going through this teen angst phase, but suddenly that's all gone. She's nothing but sweet to everyone, but she's just this sweet little zombie. I dunno what to do, especially when--" His eyes do another patrol sweep, and this time his pale face flushes. "--when she starts coming onto me with this empty look in her eyes."

That tidbit hits me right in the gut, and I pray Jake's unshed tears keep him from noticing.

"I don't know what to do," he presses on. "Like, do I just go along with it and try to make her feel loved?"

_Um, sure Jake. Keep telling yourself it's for her_. _Is it a lot to ask to exercise some older-guy restraint?_ For once, Jealous Leah and Responsible Leah think alike.

"I feel like I have to walk on eggshells now, you know?" Jake continues. I pray that this feeling is enough to keep wolf hormones in check. "Like…I told her about Bella 'cause it felt like the safest big secret, the one where I thought I sort of knew how she'd react. But then she goes and acts completely differently, and now I feel like I have no idea how to handle her."

I give Jake some trite advice and excuse myself from the party, collapsing onto my bed and curling up into a ball, Jake's last words echo through my mind like an accusation; apparently I had no idea how to handle Nessie either. I thought I was just correcting her parents' attempt to mess with fate, and somehow I've managed to make a royal mess of her happiness.

Seeing Nessie and Jake from afar, mostly through the lens of Jake's mind, I'd had this idea that she was more down-to-earth than her parents. That literal-minded Jake would be a better match for her than he would have been for her head-in-the-clouds mom. Regardless, I'd thought that settling for the guy next door was a much better fate than having to live with his death on your conscience. But Christ…what if she just wasn't capable of loving Jake the way he needed her to love him?

Last month, when things were getting bad, Jake would say that he didn't know how to be what Nessie needed. I'd seen some imprinted wolves completely change their personalities, but even that wouldn't be enough to win a girl who…only liked girls. What if all I've done is open her eyes to an inevitable disaster? A tragedy that she was cast in before she was an hour old?

I'm halfway out my window before I consciously connect the dots, once again acting before I've fucking thought things through. I have no idea what I can do to make this right…all I know is that I have to see how bad the damage is. Either that, or Selfish Leah is having her way at last, using my disorientation as a chance to get control of my body. I feel like I'm right this time, but I can't trust my logic at this point. Maybe I'm just one of the selfish fucks who make it hard for pretty girls to be happy. Either way, I know that nothing's going to stop me from seeing her now.

A/N: Sorry for the evil cliffie, but I shouldn't take too long to post again. BTW, I stole "the moronic beauty of youth" from the movie Closer.

I'm thinking of writing a Latent Prints outtake for the Twilight non-canon pairings challenge. Once I've ended a chapter more restfully, of course. I was thinking to expand on Nessie's Anna Karenina dream, a setting where Nessie/Leah fluff could get away from "real world" obstacles. Let me know if you have thoughts, or would be keener on a different sort of outtake.

Would love to hear from you about anything! Like, if you're still with me, I want to know about your awesomeness!


	9. Forsaking All Others

A/N: Stephanie wouldn't condone this stuff and nonsense. Reamhar and SecretlySeverus keep it from being literally nonsense (for the most part? I hope?). I heart everyone who's sticking with this story, reading, reviewing, or otherwise helping it happen.

_"My agonies are unique. My punishments unparalleled. The gods well know I suffered for my ignorance."_ -Sophocles, _Oedipus at Colonnus_

_~Renesmee~_

I cry myself to sleep, alone, the night that Leah leaves town, wrapping my arms around myself and squeezing as hard as I can. My dreams feature deep sea jellyfish that I've seen on PBS, pulsing flowers that explode into goo when taken to the surface of the ocean. My body, like theirs, feels like it's missing a thousand pounds of water pressure, so I clutch my shins to try to mimic the weight of Leah's presence on my chest. It's pretty hard to maintain that kind of muscle tension in your sleep though, and I wake up feeling so calm that I know my jellyfish of feeling has burst.

No one ever shed many tears over a jellyfish, be it exotic or otherwise. When I wake up calm and empty, there's nothing to do but get over it and move on. I throw myself with new gusto into the role of the pampered immortal child, grateful as never before that my family will always be here to love me. I start telling Angela that I don't have time to hang out with her; sooner or later she'll get bored of me or Forks, and I'd rather get it over with while I'm still in the swing of getting over people.

I spend my nights with Jake, sometimes sleeping; sometimes not. Now that I'm used to kissing him, I try it more deeply and more often.

The secrets of touch and taste are the only secrets we share nowadays…I know he's still keeping things from me, but I find that I don't really care anymore. Now that I have some secrets of my own, I'm glad Jake hasn't told me everything. If he ever were to get too nosy, I could threaten to get nosy in return.

I'm almost taking the calm for granted when it up and shatters around me. I overhear Jake say that Leah is in town, and I feel something flutter in my stomach. My jellyfish of feeling is back from the dead, giving the finger to the man I love.

I've read enough books to know my jellyfish for what it is, that its preference for Leah would destroy Jake if he knew. Leah said that I was Jake's whole world, meaning that his stomach flutters only for me.

Bella once told me how Jake couldn't tell her the werewolf thing outright, how he evaded some tribal edict by helping her figure it out by herself. Leah must have been doing something similar, in the rain, when she made me show her all those memories. She marked her brother's death as the key to the reason she'd come to see me, and I'm afraid she was saying that Jake might die if I can't manage to love him well enough. That it would drive Jake more than insane to know that he isn't _my_ whole world, that something in me stirs for Leah alone.

But true love is about choices, not just mindless animal fluttering. It's about bestowing your heart's deepest devotion by forsaking all others. As much as I want to see Leah, I have to work at giving all of myself to Jake.

It's a blessing, in a way, that I have to control my thoughts around Edward; if I force my every thought to orbit Jake, how long can my stomach rebel?

When Sue invites us to dinner, I know that I can't afford to go. I wait 'til the last second, though, to tell Jake that I'm too tired, not wanting him to stay home because of me. Billy would be really disappointed if Jake didn't show, and I feel guilty for keeping him away from his dad all the time.

In the end, I have to fight dirty to keep Jake from staying to keep me company. But he's off like _that_ when I threaten to tell Rose how I scratch him behind the ears.

Everyone is out hunting except for Rose, Emmett, and me, and I remember too late that my thoughts are not a place where I like to be alone these days. Furious with Jake for giving in so easily, I flounce off to seek revenge. I never said that I _wouldn't_ blab to Rose, even if he _didn't_ stay home.

There's tacky music issuing softly from the garage, whose door has been left ajar so they can say they were looking after me. I peek inside and wish that I hadn't, making a beeline back into the garden. Emmett is getting treated to…_erm_, a private "auto" erotica show.

My virgin retinas blister with the image of Rose bending _way_ over her car hood, her skin smeared 'artfully' with grease beneath a very sheer black negligee. Sometimes my parents have _nothing_ on their siblings in the lovey-dovey-barf department. I head for the garden, hoping to fill my head with nice, wholesome images of the sunset.

Despite her…interesting outfit, it isn't Rose who I can't get out of my head. It's the way that the look on Emmett's face turned his wife from a porn star into an angel. The light in his eyes burned a million times brighter than the red-gold patterns in the sky. Brighter, even, than the red-gold glow that collects in the hair at the edges of my vision.

Jake really likes to take walks at this time because of how the light hits my hair. He says it makes me look like I'm "the friggin' goddess of twilight." Ironic as hell considering that I'm more like a black hole on the inside, sometimes hollow and sometimes full of deadly, uncontrollable feelings.

Leah was never fooled into thinking that I was a creature of light. She forced me to see how I was sucking Jake into darkness, leaving once I'd gotten the message. It's only Jake who looks at me the way Emmett looks at Rosalie, drawing attention to my brightly lit surface and disguising the void inside me.

Given that Emmett and Rose will probably be busy for a while, I figure it's a pretty good time for one of my favorite activities of late. I go inside, climb the stairs to their room, and make for the largest of their bureaus. The lacy things inside have started to fit me fairly well, and I figure it might be time to model my favorites for someone special. To give him everything that I physically am, at least.

With a furtive glance at the closed bedroom door, I open the drawer just enough to stick my hand in. Laces and satins flow between my fingers, and I wonder which Jake would like best.

I thought I knew the various textures in here already, but this time my hand hits something rougher than I was expecting. I pull out a piece of paper that definitely wasn't here before.

_Think about whether you're ready, Renesmee. There's no going back once you do it._

I crumple up the note in sudden shame, furious at being found out. Embarrassment is the only reason that I've snuck around to do this…Rose has never been one to say "no" to her darling niece, and I never imagined she'd have a problem with me borrowing this stuff. I know she's still not Jake's biggest fan…is that what this is about?

Out of loyalty to my man, I rip the note to shreds, pulling out a pink lace bra and thong set. The color clashes horribly with my hair, and I feel like throwing up at the thought of anyone seeing me like this. I try covering up with a black lace negligee, but it reminds me too much of what I saw in the garage and I feel phantom grease on my skin.

It takes me almost two hours to try on all of Rose's underwear. There's nothing I haven't tried on before, but it makes me feel horribly self-conscious all of a sudden. I layer my tank top and yoga pants over a white satin corset and boy shorts, not actually sure if I'll be brave enough to take them off later. Thank God Billy keeps Jake hostage for so long whenever Jake makes it to La Push…I'll need all the time I can get to psych myself up for getting this exposed.

Rosalie and Emmett are still nowhere to be seen, so I head to my room and lie down. It's too early for bed and I don't really feel like reading, so I just open the window and listen. I try to tune out the faint vampire smooching in the background, listening instead for mechanical _vrooms_ that might be the hunters coming home. I hear a bunch of animals and smell some tasty smells, but I can't identify anything that I've never considered eating. I can smell a few plants I know, but not many, and resolve to start learning the names of animal scents.

At first I think I'm dreaming when a new smell makes my heart pound. Wolf scent, to me, smells so wrong that it's somehow right, like the weird-looking fashion models who adorn Alice's bedroom walls. This scent, in particular, is less gamey than Jake's, with a sweetness that's like berries rather than flowers. I know I should plug my nose or shake myself awake, whatever will keep the scent apparition from setting my insides aflutter. But instead I lie perfectly still and just let it get closer and closer.

I move, at last, when a scent-drenched pebble arcs through the window onto the floor. Picking up the pebble, I clutch it to my heart and peer out along its flung trajectory.

"You're not supposed to be here," I mumble.

"And you're not supposed to be scaring the fuck out of your boyfriend."

I sit down on my window seat and lean my cheek on my upraised knees. Twice she's come from La Push to see me, and both times it's just about _Jacob_. I hate myself for hating that, and I don't know what to say to her.

I wish that Leah would yell at me so I could whine like the kid I am. Scream that I don't understand what the hell I'm supposed to do. Instead, she sinks to the ground and leans her back against the house.

"_Christ_, what have I _done_?" she whispers, cutting me to the core. I can't believe that Leah's gotten mixed up in my bungled life, that she and Jake are suffering because I'm so socially demented.

I jump out of the window and sit beside her with my back to the wall, leaning against her side in a strictly comfort-transmitting way. "I'm trying to be what he needs. I really am." I mumble into my knees. "You saw in my mind, how clueless I am about stuff. I don't want to hurt him… I try so hard not to." Hunching further forward, I add, "I don't want you to hurt either."

"I am the _last_ fucking thing you need to be worrying about." She rubs my back as I give up and let the tears flow freely.

My extra-roomy mind is suddenly full to the brim with sensation, the way the pressure of her fingers is different from the sharpness of her cheekbone on my temple. Her touch seats my consciousness in each of my vertebrae in turn, moving downward until she finds the boning at the top of my corset.

When she registers what I'm wearing, Leah jerks her fingers away as if from a fence that's safeguarding me for Jacob. A part of me has the sense to be glad I put the stupid thing on, reminding both Leah and me exactly who I put it on for.

She stiffly turns her back to me but doesn't pull away, so I snuggle gently into her again.

"You didn't have to go away," I mumble, resentment raw in my throat.

"When I said I had to leave, you said, 'I know.' "

"It seemed like it had to be true, the way you said it." No _way_ am I going to invite her to tell me how it was about Jake all along.

"You want to know how to stop hurting Jake? You've got to figure out how to be _happy_." 'Happy' sounds half like an expletive and half like 'two plus two equals four.'

I squirm ever so slightly, feeling her shoulder blades rub against mine. "I'm happy right now," I say, hoping it sounds innocent enough that she'll stay.

"Jake can make you happy too. I've seen it, and you know it." She sounds like she doesn't know whether or not she wants me to contradict her, and that fact does wonders for my happiness. But then she straightens up and drives all hesitancy from her voice.

"I was stupid to run away. I know that now, and I want to explain to you why. See…I had to come back for my mom." She clears he throat. "Remember at Seth's service, all the talk about duty and shit?"

I nod, letting my stiffness convey that I'm getting more confused by the second.

"You and I…I figured it out. What we have in common, I mean. We're not the kind of girls who have some new life waiting out _there_." She waves at the sky theatrically, almost like she's pushing the darkness away. "We're like those sterile worker worker ants whose birth families never stop needing us. I left after I changed because I couldn't fucking deal with that…I wanted this personal little life of my own, and that wasn't going to happen in La Push. Not when my boyfriend had left me and the change meant I couldn't have kids." She barks a laugh. "All that jazz about college and empowerment…it's a given that you can't find _that_ kind of thing at home."

Her posture deflates as if to illustrate her words, and she sniffs as if she's crying.

"I didn't understand what Seth understood… didn't get what he saw from the beginning. He always wanted to be a wolf; it was the happiest day of his life when he changed. He wouldn't have fucking cared-" She sniffs again. "-that it would _kill_ him, if he'd known. I get it now, Nessie…the Quileutes _need_ me, and I can do much shit to help them. The tribe, and especially my mom. But all that's nothing compared to how much Jake needs you, him and your family both. You can sustain all this-" She indicates the grandeur of house and garden "-just by being you and being happy. Isn't that kind of _insane_?"

"That is…insane," I say, not quite sure what to make of what she's saying. I lean back and close my eyes, hoping her wisdom is skin-transmissible.

"You can't sleep out here," she tells me, turning around to give me a shake. Missing the support of her body, I grab her wrist to steady myself. We sit there stupidly for a few seconds, nose to nose and knee to knee.

Eventually she moves to get up, and I get up along with her. Instinctively, I pull at her wrist, bearing us both toward my parents' cottage.

"Stay with me?" I ask, looking studiously at the ground. "Just for a little while? 'Til everyone gets home?"

She nods and follows me through the door, then all the way into my room. I try to curl up in the armchair, leaving the bed for her, but she rolls her eyes and tries to move me. My fingers find her wrist again, and we both end up on the bed, lying down back to back the way we were sitting outside before.

Sometime during the night, I wake up to find her fingers brushing against my arm. Every touch ignites a spark in a distant part of my body, a shiver in my toes or a splash of feeling closer to my center. I hold perfectly still, concentrating on the strange way my nerve endings seem to be connected.

Fear tickles my nerves anew when I hear a car turn into our drive. Leah made me promise I'd wake her up if she fell asleep, that she had to get home before her mom missed her and my parents wondered why she was here. She looks incredibly peaceful though, definitely too still to be dreaming. Edward will be in thought range any second, and I'd never get her out of here before that.

As good as I am at shielding my thoughts, I'm sure Edward's caught that Leah and I are friends. If he knows anything beyond that, he hasn't let on. He and Bella know how needy I've been lately, and they'll be happy that Leah kept me company tonight.

I clear my mind, concentrating on how nice the warmth around me feels. Sure enough, my parents peek in with very little fuss. It goes so well that I don't wake Leah when I hear the purr of a motorcycle.

A prickle shoots through my spine when Jacob opens the door to my room. Still watching my thoughts for Edward's sake, I let the prickle wash passively through me. Leah and I are cuddling just like girlfriends cuddle at slumber parties. Not that I've _been_ to a slumber party, per se, but I'm pretty sure they're like this in movies.

Jake stays in the doorway for a good two minutes, then closes the door and leaves. I hear him exit the cottage and run off on four clawed feet. It's all quite normal behavior for Jake, and I drift back to sleep in no time.

When I wake for the second time that night, I'm crushed to find that I'm alone. But I feel a bit better as soon as I hear Leah bark sharply from outside.

From the sounds of it, she and Jake have given up taking turns phasing. I'm happy for a second that their pack is together again, but soon there's no denying that something is horribly wrong in their world. These barks are fierce, desperate even, like gunshots being fired into the night.

I bury my head in my pillows and burrow into the crack where the mattress meets the wall. But it's pretty hard for bedding to pull the wool over vampire senses. It can't even manage to block out the sigh of a wolf deflating into a human.

Next comes a noise that tears my stomach in two: wolf claws shredding flesh. I supply the victim's missing scream, but for once, the sound is muffled. Covered up by the trumping sound of a manic animal roar.

The roar fades away almost as soon as it has begun, sighing and shifting along with the changeling wolf flesh that produced it. Its final knell is a hollow thud. Human flesh hitting the ground.

Leah is screaming, "Goddamnit, Jake,_ no_!" along with other things I don't want to understand. Pronoun-filled phrases like "It's all my fault!" and "She's always been only yours!" Then the words start to get lost somewhere between her hysteria and mine, and I try to curl up small enough to get lost in that space too.

Strong, cold hands will have none of that, shaking me gently but firmly. They lift my head from the pillows into a lap where there's no place to hide.

"Renesmee, sweetheart, I need you to get up," Esme urges 'til I have to open my eyes. There's nothing to do but take her hand and follow her out to the Volvo.

Rose and Alice are waiting outside the car to kiss and hug me, lagging behind husbands who are halfway to the hospital already. I've never seen either of them looking so scared and forlorn before, and my mind spins with panic as I let them guide me into my seat.

I can't get my mind away from the last things Leah said to me, how I had all this power to sustain the people I love. Now I know what it means when they say that power comes with great responsibility…instead of sustaining my family and my love, I'm destroying them from the inside out.

The family soon comes together again, but it isn't a healing togetherness. We're like solitary pilgrims assembled in front of the only thing that any of us can see. Jacob, white beneath the russet lie of his coloring, felled by a heart that not even vampire venom could salvage.

I remember how Seth didn't seem to notice his final injuries, how his girlfriend's fall had seemed to kill them both in the same awful second. The scene I showed to Leah after she told me I was Jake's whole world. That was the night my jellyfish of feeling made an enemy of what I knew was right, when my better half fell in love with Jake and my rogue half betrayed us both. Apparently that betrayal was enough to cost my boyfriend his life, fulfilling my promise as the killing prodigy I've been since the day I was conceived.

If this were a fairy tale, true love's kiss would come in handy about now. But it seems that I'm the reverse of the guy whose love is a resurrection talisman. Jake doesn't deserve to be polluted with my treacherous lips, and I don't deserve to get between him and my kneeling, shaking mother. The mother whose last human gasp will always be the first thing I remember.

My father is standing just behind her, half rubbing and half supporting her shoulders. Keeping watch as she grieves, protecting her from the world. Protecting her from me.

"It's not your fault, love," he whispers gently, to me or Bella or both. Reminding me that my thought-vigilance has gone out the window just now.

"I should check on Leah," Carlisle says. "Billy and Sue and Charlie will be here soon."

"Go on and see her," Edward whispers to me, and I turn to look at him in shock. I feel too grateful to dwell on whether he's known about my feelings all along.

It's all I can do to keep track of Carlisle through the blur of my unshed tears. I fight hard to make the pressure keep building behind my eyes, hoping it might get strong enough to blind me Oedipus-style. I've killed a man who, for most of my life, was like a second father to me, though I don't seem to have the Oedipal knack for solving riddles. Would Jake have died if I'd made more of an effort to learn what he was hiding? If I'd been able to see on my own that my parents were protecting me at Jake's expense? Leah wouldn't have bothered with me then, and my feelings would not have turned against me.

I can't stop the tears from flowing when I see Leah tied to a bed, her face and neck crisscrossed by a network of angry claw scars. Even in her sleep, her arms are fighting the restraints, which bind her to a severely dented bed frame. Two brimming sedative injections are needed to quiet her down.

I curl up beside her when she stops overflowing the bed, ignoring the way the restraints dig into my body.

"We're still not sure what happened here, exactly." Carlisle tells me with sigh. He furrows his brow, considering me, but doesn't tell me to get up. "We all heard the howling, but they were human before any of us saw them. Leah was in hysterics and…Jacob's heart had already stopped. She kept repeating some odd things…" Carlisle looks from me to Leah and back again. "…for instance, that Jake 'had phased off-schedule,' "

At this bit of news, I let out a fresh sob and bury my face in Leah's shoulder. Jake never would have phased off-schedule if my sleeping with Leah hadn't made him angry…maybe saving his life would have been as simple as deciding to send her home. But Carlisle slides a hand under my cheek and forces me to look at him again. "We only knew in theory, 'til recently," he says, "just how…_unforgiving_ certain aspects of the werewolf condition can be. For better or for worse, you were shielded from much of what we did know. To protect you, or so we imagined."

Before he finishes speaking, Carlisle acknowledges the creaking of the door. Edward and Bella enter, and Edward sits down on the edge of the crowded bed.

"Come home, love. Leah's going to be fine. Staying here will just upset you."

I gently extract my hand so I can wrap my arms around Leah's waist, hugging her and inhaling her scent until the sedative makes my head spin. I put my hand on Leah's cheek to steady both of our minds, showing her the flowers and trees that I noticed in the forest when she was gone. I wait until I feel her relax against me, then turn my head out toward my father.

"She needs me here. I can calm her down so she won't need all these drugs."

As if to illustrate my point, Leah snuggles up against me. Edward's jaw muscles ripple and Bella's spine goes stiff as an icicle. Such bristling is the least of what I deserve for what I've done, but I can't stand to see it aimed at the woman who tried to prevent this.

I remove my hand from Leah's face and clear my mind of all things botanical. All things botanical except for plants that mean something to Leah and me. Mentally spread-eagling our relationship before my father, I try to show him how blameless Leah has been from the beginning, how the betrayal that killed Jake played out entirely in my head.

"I've known the gist of everything for a while," I say before Edward can mention his deception. "I thought I knew enough to keep Jake safe, but-" My voice breaks. "-that was idiotic, apparently."

On trial for my best friend's murder, I've just declined to plead ignorance or insanity. My admission makes Bella sob harder for a while, and I'm not sure I could stand to hear what she's thinking. Finally, she raises her head and I hold my breath, waiting. But then she says something that I definitely didn't expect.

"Sometimes what you know doesn't matter," Bella whispers, speaking as if to herself. "Things are just…decided. It's too late to make other choices."

I tend to tune out Bella's musings on how she never had a choice about Edward. She's recited that refrain more times than I can count, but I never understood it 'til now. I tried so hard to squelch what I was feeling, and I don't know what more I could have done.

Not that I did a tenth as much as Leah did for Jake. In retrospect, it's easy to understand the weird behavior and phasing schedule. She started avoiding him after she talked to me in the rain, spotting my inner betrayal and knowing she'd have to hide it.

I deduce that she didn't actually have to hide a random crush on Jake, and I bite my lip in penance for how happy that thought makes me. Kind of like shutting the aquarium door after the jellyfish of feeling has escaped. What does it mean for Leah and me now if we never had a choice about each other?

I can hold her hand in front of Edward because he sees in my mind what I mean by it, that I'm comforting a girl who went into hysterics because of a tragedy that wasn't her fault. Could I really hold her hand in front of Billy, though, show him I can live with what I've done?

Leah cries out in her sleep as if responding to my anguish. For her sake, I try to put it aside and place my hands on her head. I've tried to deny my feelings for her because of all their toxic side effects, but just for now I want to know if they're capable of healing as well. My feelings and I have a lot to atone for, and not just where Jake is concerned. I lean into her side and give myself over to power of her scent, letting the sedative center me so I can draw strength to center her in return. Dimly, I'm aware of my parents leaving and closing the door, leaving me alone with a silent blessing to try and heal some of what I've damaged.

A/N: _cowers in a dark corner_ What did you think?


	10. The Interpretation of Dreams

A/N: Sorry for keeping this hostage for so long, but since the story takes a turn here, I had to draft a couple of chapters at once to get it going in the right direction. Here is the first one, completed with lots of help from SecretlySeverus and Reamhar.

A special thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. I always like hearing what you have to say, and these last responses were especially varied and well thought out! I definitely didn't anticipate what people's reactions would be, and as I said in my replies, I'm anxious to hear what you think of the story's new direction.

___Part II_

"_The wicked man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life." –Sigmund Freud_

_~Leah~_

When Nessie asks me to spend the night, I know it's an awful idea, but I can't say no when she gives me that look and I don't want to let her out of my sight. The girl is fading from the inside out; just putting on a show instead of living. If I leave her alone for even an hour and her show stops having an audience, I'm afraid she'll go over some breakdown edge and we'll never get her back.

I let Ness pull me into bed with her because it means she's being active and assertive, at least. _Bullshit, Leah, like it has nothing to do with the way her fingers feel on your wrist._ Her silky yet demanding grip is driving me crazy with reciprocal want, but I grit my teeth and try not to move until her fingers relax and let go. At that point, it's easy to get the perv thoughts in check because the girl looks so damn innocent, like a porcelain doll with a look on her face that actually belongs on the face of a six-year-old.

I'm reminded of the last time I saw Nessie sleep, back before she grew up so fast and her eyes got sad even faster. It was probably the first time I ever felt anything but hatred for the girl. Bella was holding her and trying to act all maternal, but then she picked up Ness's hand and started to _spy_ on her _dreams_! I don't care how young the kid is is; it's invasive as hell to do that. Groping your child's unconscious while they sleep is just one of those common sense no no's, and no, your husband's super powers do _not_ make that creepy shit okay.

Creepy shit is exactly what I feel when I wake up with her fingers in my hair. I may have pictured Nessie's hands doing sinful, sinful things, but those things have got _nothing_ on what her hands are doing to me now. Her profile looks as angelic as ever, like she should dreaming about unicorns, but reverse telepathy lets me know that she's dreaming about no such thing. That the babyish '_O_'s she mouths are really moans of dreamed-up ecstasy; responses to my _freak_ hands going where no foreign hand has gone before.

I gather from her thoughts that Jake has acted the model of restraint, pushing her away when she can't convince him she's thought things through. _Fuck…he does _that_, and here _I_ am getting off on her private fantasies. _Drawing a husky breath, I gird up the strength to get out of bed, wriggling out of her grasp so her dreams will stay where they belong.

The second Nessie's fingers detach from my head, my mood descends into crazy. I decide to go out, acquire some fur, and hope that some of the crazy stays behind. That's when I discover that Jake caught me 'chastely' sleeping with his girlfriend. He's waiting in the pack mind, phasing schedules be damned, and 'crazy' doesn't begin to describe what happens.

Jacob doesn't get mad right away when the secondhand sex dream hits him. At first, his mind stays so still and blank that I can't be sure he's listening. Then I feel a tug on my mind that means I'm not alone.

Having shared a lot of wolf minds by now, I can pick out the imprinted ones at once. When they tug at your mind, they wobble like those stars that get pulled on by huge-ass planets. Not like this though…this wobble is too strong, and it's getting stronger by the millisecond.

I charge towards Jake at a lung-tearing speed to try and…explain that it's not what it looks like. That somehow the center of his universe didn't actually undress me in her mind. But before I can phase to cordon off my thoughts, Jake's frantic mental wobbling just stops. It's like the body he was orbiting just went up in smoke, leaving his mind to slingshot away. I can still see Jake's fur and hear his growls and roars, but there's a horrible empty space where his thoughts used to be. Jake is just…gone, but I'm not alone either. It's the closest I've come to sharing my mind with rabid wild animal. An animal that can't understand what I'm screaming at the top of my mental lungs.

I phase back so I can scream at Jake out loud, and the wolf takes a swipe at my face. At this point, I get hazy on things like where and what I am. I just know I've lost my friend and I have to get him back. Everything goes black then and I feel strangely gratified, seeing that Jake was nowhere to be found in the world that went away.

o00o

When I startle awake, I recall that the one thing I thought I knew is wrong. That the rabid wolf didn't kill Jake at all. It _was_ Jake, at the end. When he phased after that, he wasn't human anymore, just an empty human husk they dragged away. The rest of him just…_ended_, somehow, when I disproved the existence of the thing that had held his universe together: a Nessie who wanted him and him alone.

The pointless violence of it all makes feel like I'm going to throw up. I try to grab my knees to steady myself and notice my surroundings for the first time. Restless, sulfurous water is dragging at my movements; a pool fed by a waterfall that I know like the back of my hand. I don't have to open my eyes to know that I'm in one of the hot springs near the Rez. And that I may remember who I am and where I've been, but I haven't actually woken up at all.

I'm dreaming about the place that Dad used to call our special hangout, carrying me here before I was old enough to hike and tossing me into the hot spring. Little did I know that I'd come here every night after he died. That Seth would join him way too soon and I wouldn't get over losing either of them. The churning of this pool tends to excite me beyond belief, giving me license to live in the past for a little while longer.

Today, for the first time ever, the touch of the water makes me deathly afraid. Afraid I'll have to face Jake from beyond the grave, knowing I'm the reason he's beyond it. I squeeze my eyes shut and half-wish the pool to go away. Scared as I am of running into Jake, I'm not keen to face the waking world either, but for better or for worse, the dream shows no sign of fading away. Maybe the peek-a-boo principle is valid for dreams and what you can't see can't actually exist here

'For better or for worse' turns decidedly for the worse when a large warm hand squeezes my shoulder. _Not warm enough_, I realize with a sigh, and relief makes my eyes pop open. Dad leans over to kiss me on the cheek, and I capture his neck in a choke-hold.

He doesn't ask what's wrong—dream figments are nice and telepathic like that—but heaves me out of the water so I can sit on the ledge of the pool. My clothes dry instantly, making it look like I own an actual iron.

Dad looks sorry for me, but hardly funereal. For the umpteenth time, I want to smack my fucking insensitive unconscious mind. Dad and Seth, who's now skipping into view, look as happy in here as they've ever looked. Like they've bought all the Quileute 'country of souls' baloney and aren't especially sad to be dead.

Lately I've come to avoid the Quileute elders like the plague, not wanting to know what they'd think of these morbid dreams. I made the mistake of telling Billy once, and he scared me the hell out of me. For his sanity, not mine. It was like he wanted me to believe that all this pitiful nostalgia made me some kind of…prophet, or oracle. Honestly, these dreams just mean I'm neurotic and can't let go; neurotic as in I checked Freud out of the library and found a good enough explanation. He wrote this whole spiel about how immature people always dream about stuff they wish for.

Wishful thinking about Dad and Seth is all very well, I suppose. It's a proud human tradition to dream up bull about your loved ones going away to happy-land. Wishful thinking about Jake, though? Not okay. Period. When you kill your friend, you do _not_ get to make it 'better' by imagining a smile onto his face. My conscious mind understands, at least, not managing to hold back a sob.

"Leah? Hey, stop that. Not in our happy place, okay?" Seth snakes his arms around my middle and nuzzles my salty cheek with his nose. I relax against him, but squeeze my eyes shut and try to end the dream in earnest.

"Shh…deep breaths, Leah. Deep breaths. Take the time you need, but I think maybe opening your eyes would make you feel better?" It makes me cry harder to hear my brother talk like the shrink he'll never grow up to be. Besides, I hear a new set of footsteps and I'm pretty sure I know who they belong to. 'Better' isn't the word I'd use to describe how this affects me; 'imploded,' might be a better choice? 'Wanting to implode,' otherwise?

Despite the fear, I have to open my eyes and see what's left of Jake, if anything. What's there will just be a figment of me, but I miss him too much to look away.

A splash startles my lids open, and I see Jake with his head in the waterfall. The flow is combing through his Hansen-type hair—it's long like he wore it before he changed. His face looks serious but still way too calm for a guy who just got his _life_ ripped away. It's like my mind is trying to dump the Jake I knew and loved and killed, replacing him with this placeholder that's tailored to make me feel like things are okay. _Well guess what, unconscious. I ain't that cold and morally demented yet. _

"Give yourself a break, Leah. If this is hell...I'll take it." Jake's voice is different too; an Alpha's voice with no discernible pussy-whipped undertones. He stays still a beat longer, like the universe can wait 'til he happens to feel like moving. Then he climbs out of the water, finds a big rock to sit on, and flips his insta-blow-dried tresses. "Leah, babe, don't beat yourself up about me. You gotta learn to let go of stuff and move on."

"You got some kind of death wish? Saying that from inside nostalgia fest central?"

Seth nuzzles my cheek, arms gripping my middle more tightly. "How many times d'we have to tell you, Sis? This place is for us, not for you."

As if to illustrate his words, the outdoor smells start to swirl and fade around me. Jake, the waterfall, and the sunlight follow suit and I panic, not ready for what's beyond this. The arms around my ribs now feel too thin and hard to be Seth's, while the torso pressed against mine feels…thin and not hard at all.

Just when the dream is about to dissolve, Jake's voice rings out as if from far away. "Take care of my girl, Clearwater. Capeesh?"

Cue cross-dissolve to real life; a hospital room, from the looks of it. I stay as still as I can while I try to decide what the hell Jake meant. There was not a hint of jealous crazy in his voice; it was like he was talking to some dude who wanted to take his sister out on a date. A nice illusion, but nothing more, and I'll do damn well to remember that. _How dense do you think I am, anyway, O tasteless mind of mine? If he'd wanted to give us his blessing, he'd be alive to say so. Capeesh?_

Guilt flies out the window, for the moment, when the arms around me tremble. As surely as Jake fucking never would have said that, it's still what I needed to hear to keep me focused on what's most important. _You failed Jake, you bitch, and you can never, ever forget it,_ I hiss internally at my more wishful impulses._ But he's gone and his girl is hurting and you need to focus on her at this point. Keep the leeches from fucking up her life any more than they already have. _

Speak of the devil and he comes on in to squint at you and take your vitals. He marvels at my scratches being healed, like I care, and his cold hands wake up his granddaughter.

Her chin digs into the side of my neck as she stirs, clutching me tighter. Her touches make me tingle; a tingle that burns beneath Carlisle's doctorly inquisitiveness. My perv alert goes off, telling me to pull the hell away, but I know that letting her go would be too little too late at this point.

I reach one hand behind me to brush Nessie's hair away from her cheek. If she weren't here, I doubt I would have bothered to open my eyes, catatonia being easy and no less than I deserve. As it is, I take a deep breath and try hard to hide the guilt, meeting Carlisle's eyes and answering all of his questions politely.

I can't hold back a sob when he asks if I know what kind of 'trigger' might have 'stressed' Jake's heart. The sob makes him back off faster than a slightly outnumbered leech soldier, but I still wish I'd tried harder to bite my tongue and make something up. Nessie stiffens like she's been slapped across the face, like my sob has confirmed her suspicion that Jake is dead because she did something heinous. I don't know, as of yet, how to believe that we _haven't_ done something heinous. All I know is that I have to find a way to help Nessie forgive herself, even if it means trying to forgive myself along with her.

"The healing powers of werewolves are nothing short of amazing to me." Carlisle touches my scratched face like he wants to molest me or something.

_Slick change of subject, Dr. Leech, but you really don't have to look _that_ smug about it._

"Immortal cell lines that divide fast enough to heal this overnight," he goes on as if we care. "Completely error-free proliferation—it's the only explanation, I think. It would account for the healing and the failure to age, as well. I wonder if a telomerase screen would show—"

_Telomo-whatever? Jake being dead_. I weigh the subjects in my mind and find them disproportionately interesting. My glare encourages the good doctor to do the math as well, and he looks at his toes in meek confirmation that, yes, he gets the message.

"Forgive me, Leah, what I meant to say—" His puppy eyes remind me a tad of Jake and I have to hold back another sob. "—is that so much about your kind still…perplexes me quite completely. All but immune to physical and temporal stress, yet you retain a staggering amount that is biological. I used to think that turning to stone, as it were, was the price of becoming immortal. I never imagined that a different price could be substituted. A…spiritual vulnerability of some kind."

"So you think we sold our souls to be cool and the devil cashed in on Jake."

Carlisle closes his eyes and rubs his temples.

"It did kind of sound like that, Grandpa," Ness adds in a thin but steady voice. "I mean…I know you didn't mean it?"

He half-smiles at her, and his eyes get sadder. "It's an idea that occurred to me when you were born, in fact. Born immortal, biological, and strongly beholden to Quileute magic. To nothing other than the magic that seemed somehow central to the werewolves' vulnerability."

Ness and I stare, double-dog-daring him to go on.

"I would enjoy continuing this discussion when you feel up to it, Leah." He offers a smidgen of a doctorly smile. "It would settle my mind a bit, to have some idea what happened last night." His smile is gone.

"What did you tell Sue and Billy?"

"An event description, nothing more. I don't think they understood completely, though they certainly knew more than I did. I may be at a disadvantage when it comes to tribal knowledge, but perhaps I could be of use somehow?"

"We'll let you know." _Just about the time you get around to telling Nessie about that "central Quileute magic" you mentioned._

Not one to demand a last word, Carlisle ushers Ness out the door. She slides to the floor obediently and takes a step, but doesn't shift her weight. Instead she lifts her heels and pivots slowly at first, then whips around to face me full-on.

Her curls fan around her, and I suddenly think of a mermaid. Ariel submerged in her worst liquid nightmare. My lovesick mind is pulling the RomCom stunt where time slows to showcase the hottie, an illusion that jolts to a stop when she captures my face between skull-creaking hands.

The skull-creaking hands feel like feathers compared to the pictures pouring through them. Highlights of the last twelve godforsaken hours that hurt as much as they fail to surprise.

Nessie's shut-eyed version of last night seems somehow truer than how I saw it. With her eyes squeezed shut the whole time, it was like she could see the blackness eating Jake's soul. Then her feelings jump headfirst from the frostbite into the fire. It takes me a second to get over the shock and notice she's thinking about me.

I'm tied to this hospital bed with my face freshly cut up, and anger comprises a good part of the fiery stuff she's feeling. Anger 'cause I'm hurt and also 'cause she knows Jake's death had something to do with me. But the anger-flames are twistily frenching with a sweeter, slower-burning fire. The lusty fire that burned Jake's mind to a crisp when I couldn't forget about it fast enough.

The anger-fire and the lust-fire light up my mind like it's extra-dry tinder, igniting a blaze that lasts for a while after Nessie and Carlisle leave. At some point, I shake my head to find that I'm sprawled on my bed, alone. I'd known for a while, with tragic result, that Ness found me very attractive; that looking at me excited desires she knew Jake wouldn't be able to sate. But I didn't think she embraced the feelings, not enough to show me how she felt. Despite everything that's happened and the fact that the feelings seemed to scare her, I feel briefly and intensely giddy.

_She's just a kid_, a nagging voice inside me is quick to point out, _and you're an exotic female who happened across her profoundly dull life._ It's a voice I know well, the one that wanted to tell me my feelings for Sam hadn't been real. Cynic rep aside, though, I've never believed that inexperience cheapens love. When Sam imprinted, I actually cried because I'd never love that naively again. I knew might grit my teeth and decide that somebody was worth the risk of heartbreak, but it wouldn't be he same as stumbling into love with no idea what I was getting into.

I think love must be a lot like that religious crap I don't understand, how God demands people to sacrifice their kids and they just have to nod and go with it. How it cheapens the whole thing to calculate risks and make the leap that you think is going to work out for you. I understood this stuff back in high school, but what I didn't understand is that love has some clever disguises. Enough, it would seem, to sneak up on you a second time around.

I pull on my clothes and poke around 'til I find a bathroom. A splash of cold water gets my blotchiness under control. As far as the bug-eyed, crazed expression? Well, Mom wouldn't expect anything else.

A heads-up from Leech, M.D. has Mom waiting down the hall, but she doesn't try to dissuade me from going in to see Jake for myself. Her eyes look beyond dead, but oddly enough, she looks like herself again. More comfy now that the right thing to do is smack down her grief and help Billy. Not clinging or hovering, but more aware of him than of anything she might need herself.

For the first time in his life, no doubt, Charlie Swan the noisiest thing in the room. Billy, in contrast, looks like the effort of crying would break him if he tried. His body is devoid of tension except for one hand that's seemingly trying to crush one wheelchair armrest

A familiar gold chain is still wrapped around the rod that connects the armrest to the seat. It used to hold four of Billy's wolf carvings, but now it's studded with rough-edged splinters. Fragments of wood that look like mutant, thoroughbred dog hair and hang like a set of poor man's family jewels.

A grey wolf carving must be buried in my nightstand still, all tangled up in a knot of friendship bracelets from Emily. I wonder whether Billy would want me to torch the mess, but the thought just makes me sick. Letting go of the past is one thing, but forgetting it is another. And trying to hush things up? It would seem that that does more harm than good.

o00o

In the morning, I dig out a t-shirt that says, "Actually, the winter solstice is the reason for the season." Gotta love a Jesus jab that wards off tribal crazy too. Much as I love my tribe and our stories, I can't stand it when people take religious shit literally.

Talisman in place, I plug in my computer to see if the plan for today is on.

_I do want to know. See you at ten_. No attempt at a sign-off, even. It's like she knows how bad I feel for getting the address from Jake's memory archive, how this channel belongs to the two of them and our emotions shouldn't come near it.

_Shit_._ Guess we have a date then._

I get in my car and drive toward Forks, my hands testing the tensile strength of the wheel. When I get to Cullen Lane, I take a brief, close-eyed breath and almost drive past the place where she's standing. With her big hair strong-armed into a bun like that, she seems to take up no space at all. Her hand looks steadier than mine, though, as she opens the door and climbs in, meeting my eyes and smiling like _she's_ the one with the big, scary secret.

I swing into a U-turn and head for the hills, stopping when we're not far from the waterfall hangout, come to think of it. I park on the shoulder and Nessie gets out of the car, taking in the poorly maintained trail that cuts across the mountainside.

"So these are, like, heretic shamans, right?"

"Yeah, they're basically nuts." I clear my throat. "So, uh, do you know about our stories at all?"

She assumes the roll-eyed expression of a seventh grader reciting Robert Frost. "Your tribe is small, but it's never gone away. Magic in your blood and all that. There were spirit warriors and stuff, but then Utlapa got all greedy and the awesome Chief Taha Aki got his body snatched or something. He's all lonely in the spirit world, so he crams himself into a wolf brain and they all live happily ever after. Body-sharing is caring. So happily-ever-after that werewolves die when somebody—" Her voice cracks. "—_thinks_ about them the wrong way."

I nod. "So that's the part of the story that makes sense to all of the elders. You have to whine at them a little to get them to tell you anything more. The rest of the stories…they _explain_ a lot more, but it's hard to make sense of how they fit together and have morals. I've gotten most of it out of them at one time or another, but I…I'm not sure now is really the best time to bring it up."

Ness turns pale, nodding in emphatic agreement.

"I thought you should hear it from somebody," I go on, "and I suck at telling the stories myself. I suck _ass_, believe me, or we'd be staying away from these freaks." No need to tell her how late I stayed up blathering to myself about spirit warriors, dissolving into snotty stammers whenever I got within a mile of the i-word. She deserves to hear the truth from someone who has some hope of getting through it, and since that someone isn't me, I knew I had to suck it up and outsource.

She looks a little worried, so I rush to cover my ass. "I mean…they're not dangerous or anything like that. Long story short, they just…majority creep me out." _Geez, Leah, get a _filter_, will you? Way to follow through with putting her at ease._

Far from looking comforted, Nessie starts rubbing her eyes. "Hey, Ness, hey, I'm serious, don't cry. Nothing to worry about; I swear. Don't cry."

"I just…I think long stories should stay long, okay? Or the ending makes no sense. Like with Jake."

Feeling like a grade A dick, I begin to find my shoes very interesting. "Some endings don't make sense either way. But you want long stories? This is the place."

"I want to know all of it, Leah. Everything."

"Yeah…just, it's not pretty. Especially the way they tell it. It's like a radical feminist bible rewrite where men are all going to hell. Just take it with a super-sized grain of salt. The facts are all in there somewhere."

Nessie stops dead in her tracks. "So they think what happened to Jake is his fault?"

"No, not his fault. It's complicated. The bizarre thing is that the stories you need to hear? They fit into this, uh, 'doctrine' the way they don't fit that well into the real one."

We walk in silence until we reach the end of the trail, which leads us to a tiny wooden house. The shades are drawn against the daylight and little elfin shapes are moving inside. Bracing myself, I take a deep breath and announce our presence with a knock.

A/N: Related to the whole guilt/ forgiveness topic is the question of whether _I_ will be forgiven for recent events. Not to say that you should know whether to forgive me just yet, but it would make my day to hear that you're still with me on this story.


	11. The Redeemer

A/N: So here's the heretic shamans chapter. Kinda different from the usual. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it :)

Stephanie Meyer owns all this legally, though crazy feminists would interrupt now with how the author is metaphorically dead and we collectively own what we read/mess with. Hmm, so where do awesome beta readers fit into the equation? Thank you to Sarasumbrella for filling in for SecretlySeverus this week, and to Reamhar for all of her usual amazingness.

_"I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact." -Claude Levi-Strauss_

_~Leah~_

That shoddy-looking door is insanely good at keeping out noise; it just has to open a crack for this commotion to come out of nowhere.

"Helen? Helen? It isn't here! I don't know where the shaker is, Helen! It's gone, and I thought before it was somewhere near the- oh, oh, _darling_, you found it!"

Crisis averted, Helen finishes opening the door. It makes this slow, deliberate arc like she's a game show host who's tucked _herself_ behind door number two. I'm pretty sure a hunchbacked old lady is a prize that ranks closer to a goat than a car, but that's Helen for you, standing like she's some god's gift to insert-group-here.

Helen even gets fanfare courtesy of Hermie's reunion with her gourd shaker. She's sitting at the table with her eyes closed, biting her lip like she's trying to play Stravinsky. Helen lets her get in a few more shakes- gotta milk that fanfare for all it's worth, eh?-before moving away from the door to rub Hermie's shoulders and take the instrument away again. Hermie seems okay with letting it go, now that she knows where it is, and grins up at her girl like she's the happiest goofus on Earth. Hermie looks pretty damn good for being a hundred and forty or so, with her rosebud mouth lipsticked to match her sweater and not one hair out of place. Helen is way more withered and stooped; on the other hand, she does have all her marbles. All except the marbles that were missing to begin with, but I won't go there until she forces me.

"You came! I can't believe you came!" Hermie's normal singsong rises to a squeak, and I feel momentarily guilty. Not even _I_ am soulless enough to be okay with hurting this gal's feelings. I've had my reasons for avoiding this house like the plague, but maybe it was overkill to wear a smart-ass shirt today. I see Hermie furrowing her brow as she mouths, _Actually, the winter solstice is the reason for the season?_ _Ack…_hopefully she won't work out what it means. It's okay if she works out the Christian-bashing meaning, but our stupid season-changing myths are pretty dear to her heart, I think. The shirt gets the reaction I wanted out of Helen, anyway: an eye roll of epic proportions.

Hermie keeps on grinning, at least, as she stands up to walk toward me and Nessie. We're both a bit surprised when Ness is the one she reaches up to hug. Nessie's arms shake a tiny bit when she raises them to hug Hermie back, and I panic for the umpteenth time about whether this visit was the worst idea ever. The poor girl's not used to strangers and has been under what you could call strain, but she's taking to Hermie as far as I can tell, and soon we're both settled on the sofa.

It briefly looks like Hermie's going to join us on the couch for moral support, but then she flits away with surprising speed when Helen touches a fingertip to her shoulder. She bustles around the kitchen, hands something to Helen, and then the two of them creak their joints into the armchairs opposite the couch.

Speaking of joints, the things they're smoking sure don't smell like cigarettes. I decline the one they offer me, but Nessie has to go and take it. I repo the thing with a snort and let her have it back just often enough that she can't reasonably ask for her own.

Helen takes note of our actions with a supremely bored expression, looking like a bird of prey with cheekbones that jut too far to have ever looked hot. Her stare warms up a few notches when she turns it full-blast on Nessie, but I still feel pretty damn proud of Ness when she doesn't so much as flinch.

In response to Helen's tenor query as to how much she thinks she knows already, Nessie stares right back and answers, "Nothing that makes any sense."

I add my two cents on whether religious crap _ever _has a hope of making sense, an opinion that no one in the room decides to dignify with a response. Predictable of Helen to break out the silent-treatment guns when logic is _so_ on my side.

"Why do you think Leah brought you here, Renesmee? Why, when she doesn't feel we deserve a modicum of respect in our own home?" The words should be making me feel ashamed of myself, but the street preacher voice? Not so much. And her disapproving glance at my shirt? That is _so_ third grade, I'm sorry. "Surely Leah has 'warned' you against believing too much of what we say. Why does she not tell you herself, cherry-picking only what she can stomach?"

"She said that your story makes sense," Ness answers. "She doesn't think it's the right story, but she doesn't know any others. Not ones that really fit together."

"Way to take me out of context," I retort. Helen smiles angelically, and I wish she were fair game to punch.

"Since we all agree on the importance of context, we'll start at the beginning," Helen announces.

"I like the beginning," Hermie sighs, and Helen nods her agreement.

"The beginning of our story is not the beginning of Quileute magic. Far from it. It is the beginning of the decline of Quileute magic; the point at which its ebb made people notice how much they would miss it. Before the shape-shifters; before the spirit warriors came a time when our magic was universal."

"Everyone had the magic." Hermie nods and looks very serious. "All of the Quiletes and the neighbors too. Just-" Her voice drops to a whisper and her grin gets wider. "We had more than most people."

"Every people that has ever survived has survived by the grace of such magic. Small people and large people; good people and corrupt people; wise people and people who embrace their staid, easy ignorance." Fucking Helen. I _saw_ her look at me when she mentioned 'ignorance.' "The truth is that we understood the animals exceptionally well; how to raise them, how to care for them, and the lesser challenge of making them obey."

"Nobody knew about all the animals on their own." Hermie frowns at our nonplussed expressions. "But together, we were strong. So strong. It was very important magic."

"Our girls and boys became women and men by finding their spirit creatures," Helen crows. _Yeah, and I bet they walked uphill both ways to school._ "Some of us learned to safeguard and harvest the fish that bloomed with the seasons; others learned to read the sacred text of the eagle looping through the sky. 'Study your spirit-creature, and it will reward your diligence'…there was nothing more profound to our magic than that maxim. Each and every one of us had valuable potential to take in some of nature's boundless wisdom."

She shares a smug smile with Hermie before continuing in a doomsday voice. A voice that makes Nessie shiver a little, ignorant as she is about how much Helen likes to cry wolf.

"But wherever there is wisdom, there are people who choose to ignore it at their peril. Some Quileutes, marveling at their tribe's formidable strength, began to desire neighboring lands, neglecting the animal and everything else but what is merely human. Many left the village, marrying poorly educated outsiders. Even those who returned taught their children nothing they didn't themselves understand."

"It started to go away then," Hermie adds, crestfallen. Helen reaches across the gap between their chairs for her hand.

"The magic in our blood was diluted," Helen cries, her street-preacher voice cracking cheesily. "And we forgot how to harness what magic was still there. A time came when few of our children had the potential to bond with spirit-creatures, and fewer of them had any idea that such creatures were out there to find. But untaught potential does not quietly disappear; it lies in wait like a weapon that's been loaded, buried, forgotten. Certain triggers eventually caused it to make its presence known, though not in a way that did the tribe any good."

"Our spirits missed their animals. A lot. Deep down." Hermie touches the carved squirrel that hangs on a chain around her neck. "The merely human stuff? It wasn't enough sometimes. So the spirit would go away, and people would notice 'cause the body went to sleep when it was happening." She sniffs. "Sloppy magic, so sloppy. Not supposed to do obvious stuff like make people go to sleep. The kind that's working right? You're s'posed to have to work to even see it's there. The spirit warriors happened 'cause the magic got broken."

"These so-called spirit warriors were few," Helen goes on, "and they wandered brokenly indeed. Sometimes they crudely invaded animal bodies in search of their forgotten spirit mates. Unknowingly upset at not finding their true animal soul mates, they took to senseless violence and battered whatever tribes they crossed paths with. Many an unfortunate wolf and bat was forced to partake in human squabbles."

"The wolves didn't like that." Hermie shakes her head. "They remembered what Kaleha did. What goes around always comes around." Helen scowls in a loving sort of way, clearly telling her to quit getting ahead of herself. All the same, she seems to start thinking about getting to a point.

"Chief Taha Aki thought of himself as the greatest of patriots, though he had forgotten our history as thoroughly as anyone of his generation. He was neither the first nor the last to believe that expansion would serve our people. But he was cleverer, in some ways, than the expansionists who had preceded him. He observed that spending time in the spirit world had the effect of moderating the appetite; a man who caught unneeded fish one day would depart his body the next, and when he returned he would feel remorse and begin to take barely what he needed. Such a man would vocally protest Taha Aki's wish to take more and expand, to the extent that Taha Aki decided that something had to be done. Our magic was already dwindling fast, with only a few people able to enter the spirit world at all, but it was not dwindling fast enough for Taha Aki's liking. One by one, he had the magical members of the tribe cut down, the most powerful of those he targeted being the hallowed martyr Utlapa."

The two of them bow their heads. Nessie is clearly confused by the fact that Utlapa was the villain, last she heard.

"No more voice of reason after that," Hermie muses sadly. "No more reason. No more magic either. It started getting worse and worse."

"With the spirit warriors out of the way, our people came to tolerate Taha Aki's excesses." _Uh, pounding your fist every time you say 'Taha Aki'? A bit excessive there, Helen?_ "With their blessing, Taha Aki hunted our animals nearly to extinction. Territorial expansion quickly became the only reason we did not starve, and ever more distant sources of food were weakened to sustain our people."

"Don't worry; Utlapa wasn't really dead." Hermie gets up to pat Nessie's hand. "We got the magic back. You'll see."

"Indeed; Utlapa was not dead. What Taha Aki did not know is that Utlapa had escaped his body before he died. He wandered and wandered in an extreme of pain and confusion, weak enough that animals barely noticed him pass right through them. A final misfortune befell Utlapa when he entered the body of a wolf, a descendent of wolves that had been molested by the spirit warrior Kaleha, the one who had enslaved the wolves to attack their benevolent human caretakers. This wolf knew what was happening when he felt Utlapa tug at his thoughts. Knew what was happening and how to avenge the humiliation and deaths of his ancestors."

"Utlapa was so weak, he didn't even mind being trapped that much," Hermie clarifies. "So all that was left of our magic was trapped in that one wolf's body. At least Utlapa didn't have to keep running, though."

"The _wolf_," Helen spits, "was not strong enough to completely repress a Quileute spirit. Utlapa soon learned how to make his new body look human. He lived as a human for centuries, seemingly stronger than he had ever been before."

"The wolf wasn't his true spirit animal, though." Hermie shakes her head. "A parasite. Always a parasite. Never forget…it's important."

"A parasite which, from that day forward, has tainted Quileute magic." Helen bows her head. "Binding our magic to the killing of the cold ones, an old enemy of wolves everywhere. Their vendetta, once about living, has since become the pettiest of wars. Petty to the extent that we are happiest when the feud with the cold ones lies dormant, our magic lying dormant along with it."

"We have to choose between letting the wolf come out and not being magical at all." Hermie looks at me, and I sense with a sinking feeling that we're getting to the important part. Nessie looks apprehensive too, even though she doesn't know the story. "But Utlapa had lots of children and then they had lots of children. When the magic ones marry each other, it makes the old tribe magic stronger. Bad for the new wolf magic, though. So the wolf makes it bad for us."

Helen touches Hermie's hand again. "Let me back up and explain. Utlapa's sons, and their sons in turn, nearly all have the potential to phase. In contrast, the daughters seem ordinary, though the elders believe that at their peril. We have seen the shape-shifting magic jump from a woman's father to her son, but that is only the tip of a large and significant iceberg of power. It behooves you to discover as soon as you can, Renesmee, how men and women differ in their potential. A man wears his abilities on his sleeve, making it easy to gauge both their powers and their limits. Our abilities, in contrast, like our bodies, tend to cut a slimmer profile. A profile that tempts men to overlook what it conceals."

"They don't believe in the Redeemer," Hermie jumps the gun sadly. "She's the only one who can save us, and the Elders don't think she's real."

"It was prophesied that a woman, doubly descended from Utlapa, would be born with the power to phase. The power to phase and the latent power to free us from the scourge of the wolf. To cleanse our people's magic of its canine taint and end the bloody burden of fighting the cold ones."

I glare daggers, daring Helen to dwell on this before she gets to the point we actually care about. I also glare at Ness for looking interested all of a sudden.

"The Redeemer didn't arrive for the longest time," Hermie adds with a bittersweet smile.

"No, she did not. In a tribe as small as ours, she should have been born many centuries ago, seeing that shape-shifters are common and intermarriage is commoner still. But our shape-shifting men tend to marry exotic women, usually from outside the tribe; women who blind them, at just one glimpse, to all other women henceforth. Such an imprint is most _often_ exotic, but there are exceptions to every rule, even to the rule that she not have any shape-shifting blood in her family. Perhaps some daughters of Utlapa lack the potential to give birth to a Redeemer, and the wolf magic picks such daughters out to partake in allowed consanguinities. Regardless of her background, the imprint might be very, very young, her suitability for 'safe' wolf breeding being determined from birth or even before. Be she months old or hours, her wolf will wait at her side for years, being content to wait indefinitely as long as the imprint lives and breathes. Lives, breathes, and of course, appears devoted to him and him alone."

"He'd never love another. Not in a million years," Hermie puts in. "If the imprint doesn't love him? Well, that's it. No more chances." It's hard to tell whether Hermie or Nessie looks sadder, but Hermie pushes on. "He could still have kids with someone else, though. Someone he can't ever love. If his parents want a grandbaby or to try and make _her_ get jealous." Her voice is so low at this point that it's easiest to lip read, really. "Either way? No love. No peace. But still? A Redeemer could get born. Not if the wolf was dead, though. No Redeemer then."

"No Redeemer then," Nessie whispers, looking down at her hands.

Hermie nods. "That's why the parasite turns on them. It keeps the Redeemer from coming."

Nessie looks like she'd break if I tried to touch her, so I settle for staring awkwardly and hoping she'll snap out of it when she's ready. When she finally looks up and smiles, it's a deer in the headlights smile, the kind that fades in the time it would take for the light source to drive on past. Weirdly enough, I'm relieved to see that she doesn't try to make the smile stick. Relieved because I can tell she looks more sad than tortured or guilty.

The next time she smiles, I'm ecstatic to see it last a tad bit longer. But then she has to go and whisper, "No Redeemer 'til now." _That_ comment earns her a memo on the virtues of super-sized grains of salt, and of course she has to go and look all sad and hopeless again. I feel like an ass, but seriously- do they have to gang up on me here? If I knew how to trounce the big bad wolf, wouldn't I have done it awhile ago? I suck at controlling _my_ phasing, for crying out loud, let alone anybody else's. And for all their heretical hooey expertise, these hags never tell me what I should _do_. Their style is more to make me ashamed as fuck for not figuring it out by myself; for not knowing how to save my brother and my friend from the Quileute DNA boogeyman.

"You may have noticed that our story has a beginning but not as yet an end." Yes, Helen, we've noticed how you take your sweet time to end up at a _point_. "And you know that the beginning was really the beginning of a decline; the beginning of what could be an end for you; for your family; for your people. We have certainly seen the beginning of the end of the wolves; their reign must end because they live in a manner that is rapacious and unsustainable. But our true magic, our original magic? It was a talent for living sustainably. We were a small people happy to remain small; custodians of the niche that sustained us. So the question remains: will we learn to live like that again? Or will we die out when the wolves die out, our magic fatally tangled with theirs?"

Hazily, I note that this should fire me the hell up. _No pressure, Leah, but the Quileutes are fucked if you can't pull a miracle out of your ass._ I suspect that my failure to respond profanely has something to do with what I've been smoking. _Fuck_…I didn't want _Ness_ to smoke it all, but this wasn't the place to let my game slip. What if Helen says something that hurts her a lot and I'm too befuddled to do damage control?

I stare at Nessie in a panic, hoping that I haven't screwed up and failed her. That it wasn't a mistake to fill her head with stuff that has no right to be real. When she's done thanking our hosts, she stares levelly back with the sad, clear expression she's been wearing for most of the morning, an expression that's hard to read without seeming to try to be hard to read. I don't know what to do except to go with it when she takes my hand and leads me back out of the cottage.

Nessie doesn't let go of my hand in the woods, and starts leading me back up the path. She's taking care of me when _I_ should be taking care of her, and before I know it there are tears running down my cheeks. Maybe the tears are 'cause I'm being irresponsible, or maybe 'cause it feels way too good to be babied like this. Either way, they get stronger as Nessie guides me onto a nice, non-splintery log seat. Not crying is a lost cause, so I let it all out on her shoulder.

When she notices that I'm getting snot in her hair, she wipes it unceremoniously onto my shirt.

"You're stoned, huh?" she whispers into my ribs.

"That shit doesn't fucking affect you, does it," I growl back, trying to get out of actually answering.

"No, of course not." She rolls her eyes like a diva. The sight is so damn funny I snort a delicate snot-laugh. "I liked the smell and the taste," she continues, "but I was trying to be all mature. Not make a fuss since we weren't, like, _there_ for the purpose of smoking cool stuff."

I snort again. "Well, I'm glad you were there to be mature for the both of us. Tell me, though- you even know what 'stoned' looks like?"

Ness shrugs. "I knew _something_ was up when you didn't go off on Helen at the end there. Who does she think she is, trying to make you feel all guilty?"

"I have plenty to feel guilty for, Ness. 'Redeemer' bullshit aside. Not everyone here is this perfectly innocent six-year-old child."

She stiffens, glaring daggers at me._ Crap. I probably said something I shouldn't have_. I feel bad for having said it, bad for being stoned, and bad because I hurt Ness when she doesn't deserve to get hurt anymore. But the staring contest we have going on is making me feel…not bad. It feels distinctly 'not bad,' as well, when she puts her warm hands on my neck. Most 'not bad' of all is when she pulls my lips down to hers.

She giggles when I tug on two stray handfuls of her curls, tipping her head further back and opening her soft, nectary lips. I feel inordinately happy that her mouth tastes a tiny bit like honeysuckle; a flower-mimicking predator _should_ by all rights taste like nectar.

Her lips and tongue are getting progressively less shy, exploring my mouth with such gusto that my stoned appreciation must show. Wait…_stoned appreciation_. _Need to think about leading her on like this. Did not have a chance to decide what to do yet, goddamnit!_

I pull away before I can change or lose my mind, using my two handfuls of her hair to get some leverage. "It's…not nice…to take advantage when you're babysitting a friend," I pant. _Shit, she's getting mad again. That chin jut right there could kill._

"Who says I'm the babysitter? I thought I was the 'innocent six-year-old child.' And I think when the babysitter gets _stoned_, the 'child' can do whatever the hell she wants."

I cover my face with my hands. "_Touche_, Ness, it was stupid. I don't even _like_ the stuff, but you could've been a lightweight for all I knew. Jake told me to take care of you, and I wanted to keep you safe, okay?"

Her lip trembles. "When did Jake tell you to take care of me?"

I'm about to say, 'it's a long story,' but stop myself in time. "I, uh, dream about dead people, Ness. Every night, since Dad died. First it was just Dad, then Seth too. Now…yeah, I saw Jake. He, uh, seemed happy, for what _that's_ worth. Fucking Pollyannaish of me, I know."

She looks spellbound. "I wish you could show me. The way I can show you things."

"Yeah. I wish I could too."

"Is it just 'cause you're stoned that you didn't want to kiss me?" she asks in a very small voice.

"I think you could tell that 'not wanting to kiss you' wasn't the issue."

A blush worthy of her mom and then some spreads across her face. "Then what _is_ the issue?" she asks, dropping her face and looking up at me through her eyelashes.

I cup the back of her neck and tug her hair, forcing her to look up at me properly again. I move my lips to her temple and she giggles, trying to twitch away, but I twist her hair around my fingers more firmly, having none of those shenanigans.

I want us both to stay perfectly still so I can concentrate on her smell, the smell that hits my wolf nose like the floral incarnation of danger. Heart-racing danger that pumps my blood south, depriving my worrywart brain, and I move my nose into her hair so I can put my ear right next to her hammering pulse point. My heart accelerates just a little 'til it's synchronized with hers.

"The _problem_ is that you make me fucking crazy," I whisper into the thicket of her curls. "Too crazy to take care of you like I should."

I'm too thrown to protest when she breaks my grip with a teaspoon's worth of effort, springing to her feet and shaking her hair with the lazy one-two grace of a shampoo model. I'm completely thrown _before_ I find myself toppled into the dirt with Nessie sitting sidesaddle across my hips.

"That's not a problem anymore, is it?" she whispers sweetly into my ear. Sure enough, when I try to move, my effort is a total fail. That being said, my 'effort' might be less pathetic if her hands weren't rubbing my shoulders. "I let you play Ms. Responsible 'cause I thought that made you happy, but maybe it'll stress you out less just to know how strong I am."

"Okay-" I gasp. "Strong? check. But Ness…how are you holding up, really?"

"I'll be okay, Leah…really." She concentrates somberly on tracing a circle with her finger just above my collarbone. "It's just…I miss Jake so much, and I feel so sorry for him, but at the same time? It's crazy that this- this thing with you and me?" She cups my cheek, and I repress a sigh. "I felt awful 'cause I didn't want to hurt Jake, but maybe we were just hurting the dog spirit or whatever. The spirit that was hurting him and wouldn't let him even-" Her voice cracks and she sniffs loudly. "I mean…I dunno if I could've kissed you if I thought that Jake had loved me on his own, you know?"

"He did love you, Ness. Never doubt that for a second. Like I said, I really don't know how much of that horse shit we should believe. I thought you deserved to know what I know, which was never a heck of a lot." I struggle to sit up and she lets me, settling back on her knees in the dirt. "We can't just believe what makes us feel better, Ness. It isn't right, and it isn't fair to Jake."

"I'd never do that, Leah. It just…made sense to me, is all. The story made sense, and now…" She takes my face between both hands. "_This_, with you? It's starting to make sense too now, I think."

Nessie leans forward to brush the tip of her nose against mine. I close my eyes and grope for her jaw line with my fingers, finding purchase to hold her still so I can touch my lips to hers.

Deadly serious talk has pretty well quenched our frenzy from earlier, restraining our tongues in more ways than one and making our breath stop dead. The kiss is short and dry and…somehow the most intense thing _ever_? Even the shape of her lips screams danger, reminding me how she's off limits in… let me count the ways.

"Come see me tomorrow?" Nessie murmurs, pulling a hair's breadth away so she can get the words out.

"Yeah. I'd like that. And I guess we should get you home."

"Would you mind terribly if _I_ drive?"

Nessie waits while I cringe, then takes my hand in hers. We lock eyes and head at a deliberate pace up the trail.

A/N: Wow…guess I have a knack for writing really stubborn characters. Apparently it just took eleven whole chapters to get them to kiss :-p Love to hear your thoughts, as always, whatever they might be :)


	12. Abraham and Isaac

A/N: Greetings! I heard some rumors of alert fail around the time of my last post, so make sure you read The Redeemer before this if you haven't already. So sorry if that happened to you. Much beta appreciation love to SecretlySeverus and Reamhar, and Stephanie Meyer backslash-neq Me. (Sorry; that was way too nerdy. Backslash-neq is how you generate the little equals sign with a slash through it if you are not a symbol-hating, sometime-story-alert-failing website. I will shut up now and let you (hopefully) enjoy!)

_"And [God] said: 'Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.' And Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and isaac his son; and he cleaved the wood for the burnt-offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him….And Isaac spoke unto Abraham his father, and said: 'My father…Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?' And Abraham said: 'God will provide Himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son.' So they went both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said: 'Abraham, Abraham.' And he said: 'Here am I.' And he said: 'Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him; for now I know that thou art a God-fearing man, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from Me.' " - Genesis 22: 1-24. _

_~Renesmee~_

Leah looked scared and angry when she told me how she'd dreamed about Jake. It actually made me jealous that she felt that way, 'cause the fear meant Jake must have seemed so real. I burrow back under the covers and try to dredge Jake up from my own dreams. It isn't any use…not even a sliver of the smile that never failed to make me smile back. All I remember dreaming about is Bella sobbing tearlessly over him.

Too chilled to go back to sleep, I get up and squint at my face in the vanity. Per usual, I try to tame my bed hair with my hands, tugging on the sections that got all twisted and messy during the night.

Jacob used to touch my hair a lot, but I couldn't even feel it most of the time. He would use just the tips of his fingers, I think, like he was super-afraid of hurting me. He was so aware of things that could possibly cause me harm, and I always wrote it off as overprotectiveness. Why couldn't I have tried to be more like him instead and learned to protect him too? I missed so, so many signs that I was hurting him over the years; signs that are now burning my eyes off in the proverbial rearview mirror.

Half of my hair still has knots in it, and I pull it hard in frustration. I want it to hurt- and it does- but another feeling stirs alongside the hurt. _Leah pulling my hair while we kissed and her mouth was hard and soft and everywhere_…I collapse and let myself remember. The first kiss made my stomach clench, and the second, restrained one…_Ahh!_

I grab the sides of my forehead and breathe. _Why should I deserve this…to feel this way?_ It's a new kind of wonderful, a torturous kind, though I'd be lying if I said I'd want even the torture part to stop. Slowly, I trace the path behind my skull where Leah's touch branded my scalp. When I get to the nape of my neck, I tug backward, remembering how good that felt. The problem is that it exposes my throat to a heartbreaking absence of kisses; I want _more_ and my insides are going to implode if I don't get it soon.

The emptiness in my gut reminds me of how much I want Jake back, but though missing him hurts me all over inside, it can't quite push Leah out of my head. Does it make me a horrible person if being away from Leah for hours can compete with being away from Jake…_forever_? I can't really grasp what _forever_ means, exactly, but being away from Leah for a night? Each of my atoms is grasping how that feels and protesting with maximal atomic willpower.

_Focus…_I shut my eyes and breathe again. My gut still feels hollow when I open them. But now I'm lying at an angle where my phone comes into view, so I jump up, grab it, and scroll to a number I haven't had the guts to ever call before. My thumb finds the send button but shies away when my other hand finds more hair snarls.

I can't help reflecting that a certain someone would probably look perfect in the morning. Her hair would spike and tousle just like Edw- _eww, since when did I get why that's sexy?_ I sigh as I detangle another of my impossible-to-tousle-nicely curls. The phone gets tossed toward the nightstand on the far side of the bed from my mirror, and I resume my efforts to look more like the side of the family that doesn't need to sleep.

Ironic, how I figured Jake's feelings for me meant I was somewhat mature and…desirable. Guess he'd felt that forever, though, since before I could walk and talk. _Poor Jake…poor, poor Jake. _I have to curl up on the bed again. Jake is gone- really _gone_- and I was never actually desirable at all. Was I being the world's biggest idiot to expose my feelings to Leah like I did? I shudder with delayed embarrassment, having _no idea_ what I _possibly_ could have been thinking.

The shame is enough to make me dive across the bed and take the phone in my hand again. I scroll to her number, thinking I have to explain…what? I drop the phone onto the bed and shy away once more. _Focus on today if you can't take stupid stuff from yesterday back_._ First step: finish fixing hair and pick out some halfway decent clothes._

Easier said than done with the clothes; this may be the first time I've cared. I realized that Alice and Rose have probably been dressing me on the young side for awhile, so I put on a boring jeans and tank top outfit that my mom bought me last month. The clothes look okay at first- not sexy, but not like I'm twelve, I hope?- until I've stared at them for so long that they start to look like a scary costume of some kind. Clothes are like a language, I realize; a language I've never bothered learn. For the third time this morning, I pick up my phone with a pounding heart, and this time I actually press send.

"Nessie? Hi!" Angela answers more sweetly than I could possibly, in any universe, deserve. Is this how friends always sound when you call after repeatedly blowing them off?

"Hey Ange." I wish she could see me hang my head.

"Listen…I heard about Jake. If there's anything you need, just ask, okay?" The concern in her voice makes me sniff. "Oh, Nessie, I'm sorry. I should have waited for you to bring it up."

"N-n-no, t-thanks, Ange. Really." I try to get a grip on the worst of the sniffles. "I mean…are you busy right now? This morning?"

"I'm supposed to go to church, but my dad would understand. Would you like me to come and see you?"

Remembering why I called her in the first place, I cringe. _Clothes consult? Really? That's the thing that makes you finally call your 'friend' ?_

"Actually, Ange, d'you think maybe I could come to church too?"

"I wasn't fishing for that, Nessie. We can do whatever you'd like."

"I think…I'd like to get out of here."

"Is it bad? I wish I could do more." She pauses. "So your cousins aren't coping well, then?"

I cringe. "This sounds awful, but I wasn't even thinking about them. That's why I'm going crazy, I guess. Too much thinking about myself. Maybe church would help me think about other people for a while?"

Ange laughs gently. "I guess church can do that sometimes." Then she gets more serious. "They were talking on the reservation-apparently Billy isn't sure…what he wants for the funeral. He asked me about church burials like he didn't want a traditional one for Jake."

"He doesn't want one of the elders to speak, like they did for Seth?"

Thinking back to that ceremony feels like trying to remember the Mesozoic. There was all that stuff about young men making sacrifices for their tribe; I had figured they meant the werewolf thing, how that's supposed to guard the tribe from vampires. At the time, I thought that the 'sacrifice' meant how wolves have trouble holding real jobs, and it didn't quite make sense since Seth had absolutely loved being a wolf. I don't think he worked at his phasing control much; he wasn't ambitious, really. He was happy to hang out on the beach all day and have a good excuse to never do much else.

_No, that wasn't the sacrifice_…I shiver. The sacrifice was dying. Dying because his imprint couldn't live with having betrayed her son for him. I heard later that Lily's husband had found out about the affair, and had sworn to keep her from seeing the child ever again. Jake said her husband probably couldn't have managed that, even; she was just too upset to think about whether or not it was actually possible. I wonder if Lily knew what would happen to Seth, and if that would've been enough to keep her alive.

"I think Billy's starting to question some things," Angela says sadly. "My dad's seen it happen in his congregation before; people losing faith in a God who lets these early, pointless deaths happen."

_Billy crushed his little wolves_, I remember, thinking about the chain of splinters that decorate his wheelchair now. I wonder if he's stopped believing all the stories where the wolf spirit is the good guy. I want to tell Angela what I learned yesterday and see if she'll trash it like Leah did. _Of course she will_, I reason, though I can't quite picture Angela trashing anything. She doesn't know that any of the magic is real, so there's no way she'll think it's alright to believe any of the myths. Still, she'd want to know about all the versions of the myths, right? And Helen seemed like she'd explain her doctrine to anyone who wanted to listen.

"You sound really sad that he's stopped believing," I say.

"It's always so hard to watch someone lose that."

"But you've never believed in any of the Quileute stuff."

"We can't live without believing in something, Nessie. That's why I wanted to study folklore. I want to know why certain stories are able to make life worth living; why people believe them and what sort of trauma can take that belief away. I've seen faith do good things and awful things in my dad's church over the years, but nothing is as awful as seeing a loss destroy faith once the faith is… somehow permanent. When you get to a certain age, it's hard to get new beliefs into your head. The age isn't fixed or anything, but most people reach it eventually. If you've always believed in Quileute lore and you suddenly lose that along with your son, your mind can come out of it…damaged."

"Damaged, like, forever?"

"I'm really not sure. I hope not." After a pause, she goes on as if shaking herself out of a trance. "Would you like to drive to the church with me? I can swing by and pick you up."

"Don't worry, Ange; I can drive myself. I need to go to La Push right afterward."

The church is just a meeting room, really; shaped like an extra-large shed. I guess the cracked husk of paint is no worse than what most houses have in La Push, but it seems worse, somehow, since there isn't a seascape to distract you. The only natural beauty in the lot is a narrow belt of lawn and a rosebush on it; then again, the roses are so plump and smooth that maybe other plants would be beside the point.

"You like them?" Angela asks. I jump and spin to face her.

"They're perfect," I say honestly, and she insists on cutting me a bunch of them with the nail clippers she keeps in her pocket. I try to accept them carefully, like I'm scared the thorns could make me bleed, drinking in their scent before tucking them into the slack insides of my backpack. Then there's nothing to do but follow Angela into the building. I'm glad she doesn't insist that a preacher's daughter has to sit up front, but follows without a word when I pick a spot that looks inconspicuous.

The sermon gives me so much to think about that I literally don't notice when Leah texts me. Maybe it's the sermon, anyway, or maybe just how everyone reacts. There's a wave of eyelid droopiness that throws me for a loop, reminding me of how I couldn't believe that so many kids fell asleep in class at high school. High school was the first time I'd been around a large group of people who were capable of sleeping, and I guess I'd never had much idea about what tends to make people drowsy. I'd always figured that Jake was weird for falling asleep when I tried to read poetry to him; that most people would feel more awake 'cause it made their hearts beat faster to hear that stuff.

The thought of Jake makes my stomach lurch, and this time it's not just how much I miss him. I just went ten whole minutes, at least, without thinking of Jake at all. Is that what _happens_ when someone dies; they fade to nothing, like my father's human memories? I decide it's the distractible vampire mind that erases anything that doesn't go on forever, and resolve to hang onto everything Jake was with everything in me that's human. _These flowers are for you, Jake,_ I decide, slipping a finger into my bag to feel their softness.

Angela shoots me a look of concern and I try to pull myself together, but thinking about Jake is something that is hard to stop on command. Now that he's on my mind, every line of the sermon reminds me of him somehow, and I probably would have burst into tears if I hadn't been rescued by a distraction. The room fills with rustles and swishes as the worshippers get up to kneel, some grabbing prayer books and flipping through the pages before a silence descends.

I open my book at random because I'd rather watch the people than the words; of course, it opens where the binding is worn, which happens to be the right page anyway. The weird thing is that no one seems to be actually looking at the books; they chant "Our father, who art in heaven…" like their memory is as perfect as mine. Some of them have their eyes closed, and others are gazing slightly upward, but a lot of them use their hands to pay attention to the books they're ignoring with their eyes.

Angela moves her finger across the page like she's reading Braille, and it makes me think of how Bella always looked when she'd read me her favorite books aloud. She rarely looked at the page because she knew the stories by heart, and when I asked her why she had to hold the book at all, she shrugged and said it just felt good. Carlisle said later that the books are important reminders of where the stories come from; that the language we use doesn't belong to us at all but to the species we had to leave behind.

The service ends when the prayer is done, and that's when I discover Leah's text.

_church huh? the pt of ystrdy wsnt 2 mk u prayer-psycho_

It's amazing how I can picture every comma and stress that Leah didn't bother to type. "Point" would be a couple of pitches higher than everything else, with the 't' almost getting its own syllable. There would also be a rhetorical "in case you were wondering" which apparently wasn't worth the extra transmit cost.

When Angela asks me what's so funny, a full-blown snort gets out. Snorting and texting in church are probably frowned upon though, so I pocket the phone with the message still unanswered. I shoot Angela a terse "tell you later, 'kay?" and she answers that I can if I want. We find the back of the line of people who are waiting to tell her dad he was awesome, and it's fairly awkward as we stand side by side not mentioning my blush or shifty eyes.

My right thumb slips into the pocket with my phone and ghosts here and there over the buttons. It's picking out various replies that I definitely couldn't send to Leah for real. Three times over, I touch the paltry eighteen letters of "this is the girl I love." Would Leah be able to read between the five stale words like I had done with her message?

The third time I touch the letters, Angela looks away from my face. I realize that my lips are moving readably. _Don't turn! Watch! I have to tell somebody how I feel!_ screams the part of me that's puppetting my thumb.

o00o

"How was church?" Bella asks me when I step out of the car into the garage. She's sitting on the concrete steps ignoring a book with a stare that's blacker than her eyes.

"Church was interesting," I say. "But…how come you're reading in here?"

I still haven't answered the text Leah sent, which is why I couldn't go see her. My mind is too clogged with what I _want_ to say to come up with anything I _can_ say. I guess I already showed her how I felt in the hospital, but telling her seems even scarier, somehow. With words, you have to trust someone to fill in your meaning and take all the right things seriously…I think I'd _die_ if I bared how I felt and Leah read it as some mockable cliche.

"I was going to drive somewhere nice to read, but I…didn't get up when I sat down." I notice that Bella's hugging the motorcycle jacket and rubbing at her perfect, dry cheeks. Sitting in the exact same spot where I sat when I first discovered the jacket.

"Mom, your hair is a disaster," I say gently. "Come let me fix it before Alice disowns you." She holds out her hand and lets me lead her into the garden, and I kneel behind her in the grass. When I touch the hair at her temples, though, she takes my hands and pulls them around her middle, so I hug her tightly and rest my cheek against hers.

"Church made me think of you and Jake," I say. "The sermon was on Abraham and Isaac."

"God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son?" She sounds confused. "How did that remind you of…?"

"He thought he had to choose between his faith and his son. Like you and Dad having to choose between my freedom and Jake staying…_happy_."

"Not…_staying_ happy," Bella sighs. "He never got to _be_ happy. Not in that way."

"Because you loved Dad more than him?" She nods, and I take a deep breath. "Mom? I…think I understand now. How you felt."

Bella doesn't breathe for a minute, then pulls away and re-kneels where she can look at me. Her eyes are scarily black today, and I wonder how much she suspects. Does Edward know? Did he say anything? Do they hate Leah the way I think they used to?

"I understand- 'cause of the sermon- why you couldn't choose, I think. People wouldn't like the Abraham story if Isaac died at the end, and I think it'd be sort of…forgettable if he just chose his son over God. Probably people like it 'cause Abraham got to have it both ways in the end- he makes a scary compromise, but God doesn't cash in on what he promised. And that's everybody's dream, right? Only…no one wants to talk about what would happen if Abraham had to risk Isaac's life like that again. And he thinks things'll turn out okay like before, but…this time Isaac gets hurt."

"I read that story a couple of times in high school." Bella's voice is somehow sadder than her faraway, nostalgic expression. "People said I was making too big a compromise…throwing my life away to be with your dad. Some of what they said…really bothered me at first. I thought I was giving up a lot. At some point after I changed, though, I stopped feeling like I'd given up anything. I knew I wasn't going to ki-" She looks horrified. "I mean, I didn't have to give up Charlie. Renee wasn't even mad that I got married-" This time she smiles. "-and I didn't eve-" The smile vanishes. "I didn't have to give up being a mom."

I take Bella's hand and squeeze it, trying to silently ask her what's wrong. She smiles nervously, then takes a deep breath. "I felt that way for a couple of years, I think. Like I hadn't had to make any sacrifices. Then I started worrying that maybe…that I did give up something important." She looks at the ground. "I didn't know how good of a mom I could be when I'd never even turn nineteen. Especially since- since I didn't want to be the same kind of mom as Renee. I tried to learn from Esme, but…it was hard to get advice from her sometimes. I think she was really worried about stepping on my toes with raising you; she said you were mine and Edward's, and we tried…we tried to be what you needed. But then one day you looked at me and- and I knew I was like Renee to you after all. You showed me every night that you loved me but…I could tell you didn't think of me as 'Mom.' Your best friend, maybe, like Renee had been to me, but I wasn't…_Mom_; not really."

"Oh, Mom…" I sob reflexively, and we wince at how hollow it sounds. "I didn't think- I mean, I didn't know-"

"It's okay. I never thought about it either; all those years it was me and Renee. But- Nessie…there's something else that's been bothering me for awhile." She grips my hand so hard I wince, and I feel awful for not knowing what she's going to say. "I've been feeling like you hate what we are. The way that Edward used to hate what he was. I didn't think you hated your whole life, just…that you thought being human would be better. And you didn't get a choice like I did; I- I chose this life for both of us."

I don't feel the tears running down my cheeks until Bella wipes some away. "So you wanted to make sure I got to choose…about Jake."

She nods. "If me and Edward and Jake were all human, I think Jake would've been okay. He would've gotten hurt when I chose Edward, but…it wouldn't have lasted forever. Like how he said _I_ would've been okay if Edward had…" She shakes her head, and I think I understand.

"But it wasn't that simple 'cause of the imprint."

"It was take away the one choice you had left- who to be with- or take away Jake's last chance to be happy. I couldn't make a choice like that- I just _couldn't_. Edward said he couldn't either. And the only third option was if you wanted Jake the same way he wanted you. It would've been too perfect to be real, but honestly…I'd gotten used to perfect things happening. And I hoped you wouldn't hate what we were anymore once…you had someone to be with like the rest of us do. So many fairy tales had come for me and I never thought-" She covers her face and bends forward, shaking a little.

"Mom? Mom, I said I understand." I inch forward so I can hug her, our folded knees side by side in the grass. "Hearing that sermon made me see that I…I believe in fairytale endings too. I'm not strong enough to make hard choices without hoping it's a test like it was for Abraham. That like…if I give things up, I'll always…somehow get them back in the end."

This time I'm prepared for the disconcerting blackness of my mother's eyes. I meet her stare and hold it as she tries to figure out what I'm saying.

"Who told you?" she asks, not needing to specify what about.

"Leah told me," I answer. "She told me and…Mom? I think I'm in love with her. I tried to give her up, for Jake, but I never…stopped hoping I wouldn't have to."

"She told you awhile ago, didn't she?" I'm having trouble reading Bella's face, and it's not for lack of trying.

"No. Well…she sort of hinted."

"The night of Angela's party? When you kis- when you came home all soaked?" I nod. "Part of me was sure right then that you knew the truth about the imprint," she sighs. "I just… I tried not to see it. I hoped _so much_ it wasn't true. If you'd kissed him because you knew, it meant I was sacrificing you for him-"

"Mom, listen to me. You weren't sacrificing anybody. I was making the choices myself. I wanted Jake to be happy, and he made me happy too, in a way. Leah- she's such a force of nature, and when I'm with her, it's like I know I can't control how either of us feels. With Jake I felt more in control, like…I could work at making him happy. Though I guess that was a delusion." I try to hang my head, but Bella takes my face between my hands and forces me to look her in the eye again.

"It's scary when you don't have a choice," she says in a low voice. "But pretending you have a choice when it's already too late…?"

I swallow. "That's a delusion too. Like…that time Dad tried to leave you?"

She nods, and her smooth forehead creases. "Have you told her how you feel?"

"Sort of…no. I haven't." I can feel the edge of the phone digging accusingly into my leg.

"Nessie? I'm a little bit worried. I don't know Leah that well, but she seems…really strong-willed. Like Edward. I think you're more like me, and you understand about not having a choice, but if she thinks that choice isn't good for you…I don't want you to go through what I did. When you've gone through more than that already."

She gives me the sternest, most parental look I've ever seen on her face. It's impressive, but the effect is destroyed when she bites her lip and looks down. "Listen to me. I'm just like Renee; all excited my daughter's in love. I guess I should be telling you she's way too old and you're too young to know what you want."

"Well…why is it so bad if you're like Renee? You were super-mature, right? So you needed a best friend more than someone to punish you. And there are reams of records of how super-mature I've always been. Maybe since we're not normal, the normal kind of mom thing isn't what works for us."

"Maybe. I'm…really glad you said something, Nessie. Glad we both said something, I guess. And I hope…that maybe part of what I wished for will come true now. The part where you don't have to be alone." She kisses me tenderly on the forehead, then gets up and walks toward the house. I watch her without trying to follow. Just before she opens the door, she turns around to look at me again, and her face is beaming with the brightest smile I've seen in what feels like centuries.

A/N: I'll be interested to hear how many opinions of my Bella this chapter will change. I've gotten a lot of comments on how she hasn't been the ideal parent so far, and while this explains a bit of what's been going through her head, I can't quite decide how much it redeems her. Maybe she made the best of a really tough situation, or maybe she needs to grow a backbone and stop making excuses for her screw-ups. Anyway, sorry for neglecting her and Angela for so long, and I hope it was nice to finally check in with them. Leah will be back next time, naturally. Please review- it really helps me figure this writing stuff out.


	13. A Love Story

A/N: Much beta love, as always, to Reamhar and SecretlySeverus. Also, a slightly different (R-rated) version of this chapter will be posted on Twilighted (pen name Cerena), and some of you may wish to wait for that one. Or not :) This disclaimer suggests that I am not Stephanie Meyer and do not own these characters. Sorry for the lack of pretentious quote this time, but I guess I wasn't thinking along those lines while I wrote this chapter.

_~Leah~_

"Will you look at my Ms. Popular," Mom jibes as I grope for my phone.

"Damn straight." I check the caller ID and make a show of covering the screen with my hand. "Back in a sec- hafta see what 'lover boy' wants." With that, I exit the kitchen, covering a yawn with a joyless sort of ass wiggle. When sarcasm is in your blood, you've gotta learn the art of preemptive innuendo.

_Angela invited me to church_, the message reads._ Can I come and visit you after? _

I consider messaging back that I can't wait to see her; hell, I consider inviting myself along. I figure it desecrates something or other to lust after a girl you're in church with.

Looking casually off to the side, I tuck some hair behind my ear and, in the process, rub my elbow against my breast. The nipple still stings where her flinty one bruised it through four fucking layers of our clothing. More to the point, it stings because I think I was pinching it in my sleep.

If dreams were that straightforward all the time, Freud's ghost would be out of a job. It picked up where Ness and I left off in the forest and turned the heat up to vaporize. Without the clothes, her flinty nipples seemed to poke straight through to my soul, but they still didn't probe me quite as deep as that overawed look in her eyes. That look laid me open, raw, and wanting everything she was; then she touched where I was wet and undid me. I arched and screamed and it was so…_so good_. My life going up in fireworks.

I screamed myself all the way down from the high and woke up soaked in sweat. Unfortunately, the sweat felt icy cold and the last of my screams weren't the good kind. Jake's smiling face had come back to haunt me like an afterimage hiding behind my orgasm; a grizzly kind of price tag that made me gag on everything good I'd just been feeling. Needless to say, I got out of bed and scoured a couple of drawers for caffeine pills, and when they didn't turn up, I drove for an hour to the nearest all-night convenience store.

I pop a couple of caffeine pills dry, considering Nessie's simple yet cryptic message. Could the church thing be a hint, as in I made her dirty and now she has to somehow get clean? I type some throwaway quip and press send, shaking my head and hurrying back to Mom. Hopefully Ness's answer will give me a clue that won't stump my stupid, jittery brain.

"It's a bad sign when 'lover boy' lets you off the phone that fast, you know." My preemptive innuendo worked great, judging from the bored-to-death look in Mom's eyes. Her interest in who messaged me is hovering close to zero, about where her interest in most things has been hovering lately. I wonder if it would make her happier or sadder to know what's up with me and Nessie, but I figure there's no point in wondering too hard when _I_ have no idea what's up with us.

"Says the lover girl of Charlie Swan?" I counter, and I think Mom smiles for real.

Soon, Mom leaves to crash the slumber party that Charlie's been having with Billy. I make an excuse not to go, knowing I don't share their talent for grief counseling.

Staying home can be a recipe for nap time, so I start scrubbing the floor to avoid that, and at some point I notice that the varnish is coming off like I'm a new wolf who doesn't know her strength yet. I probably wouldn't have dealt with them if it weren't an excuse to drive to the hardware store. I go out and am too un-pathetic to check my phone nonstop in public. Then I come back and open a can that makes me lightheaded in a new way, and I start this repetitive dance where the steps are brush-swipe, brush-dip, check my phone, die inside. Why the fuck did she ask to come over if she was just gonna ignore me when I answered?

When I'm done cleaning, I'm sure the floor looks marginally worse than it did before I decided to fix the scratches. Whatever…it's not like Mom cares, either way. I go to the living room in search of a new task.

The next thing I know, I'm rubbing my eyes and find I'm sprawled more or less on the sofa. On the plus side, I don't remember having any dreams; on the minus, there's _still_ no goddamn text message. Then I hear a ring and figure out that it's the doorbell. Probably Mom forgot her keys; she's been doing that a lot lately.

"You came," I rasp when I open the door. It isn't Mom. _She came_. The late afternoon light caught in her hair is hurting my eyes.

"Mmm-hmm." Nessie bites her lip and un-slings a backpack from her shoulder. I hear but don't see some zipper teeth unzipping, my eyes being occupied with her face. Then hot fingers open my hands and close them and there are lots of…pin pricks. Distinct little pricks from rose thorns. My senses aren't sandy and sleep-blunted anymore; I haven't felt this awake…maybe ever?

I smell the rose, cupping both hands around the petals, and notice I'm also holding a folded piece of paper. Ness seems happy-and incredulous, maybe?-that I keep smelling the rose as I unfold the note. _Right_; I guess I tend to put up a fight about sentimental shit like roses, but this letter: _yes_, this letter. Unfold. Read. Been waiting to hear from her all day.

"Your phone broken?" I ask, remembering that I should be mad. I do get a little mad when she shakes her head as calmly as you please.

"Not enough space to write," is her excuse. She indicates the letter in my hand.

_Dear Leah_, it says in a shaky yet arty script. _Please don't be mad about the rose. I remember how you said roses were stupid, but that's sort of why I wanted you to have it, if you'll let me explain. _

_You don't think roses are very interesting because they're freaks that were bred by humans to look the way they look. You like ferns and pine trees because they have a real place in nature and their anatomy tells the story of how they've survived. Just now, I went out into the woods and looked for a beautiful fern to bring you, and I found a lot of really nice ones but just couldn't stand to rip any of them up. They were living their own lives that didn't have anything to do with us, and I didn't feel right ending any of those lives, even to make you happy. With this rose, it was different; like you said, most roses wouldn't exist if people hadn't planted them. This one came from a bush next to the church, and it was just this sad, unnatural freak flower waiting for its real life to begin. Waiting for someone to pick it and turn it into part of a love story._

"A love story?" I whisper.

"Yeah. A love story." She looks scared, but doesn't avoid my eyes.

_I hated being a freak before I met you. I was lonely and not that excited about being stranded forever in a world that didn't have a place for me. I'm never going to feel that way again, even if you don't love me the way I love you. See, I know you're sad a lot of the time, but I'd still be really proud if I could learn to be more like you. I could go away somewhere and think about plants and appreciate how beautiful it is that they survive in all these interesting ways that have nothing to do with me. The way you live is beautiful, the way you are is beautiful, and I just wanted you to know I feel that way, since people who aren't freaks have trouble understanding how life is for us. _

_Yours always, Nessie. _

"Why are you crying?" she asks, and I realize that my cheeks are indeed wet. "Don't cry. I didn't mean to make you cry." _Shit_. Now _her_ face is getting a bit blotchy.

Not trusting myself to speak, I take her hand and pull her inside. I close the door, turn my back to Nessie, and press the rose and the letter to my chest. Several tears splotch the ink as I set the letter on the back of the couch.

"Leah? Please…talk to me?" Nessie tugs on my hand lightly, trying to get me to turn and face her again. I let her turn me and cup her face, drawing my little finger through her wet lower lashes.

"Please tell me you won't do that," I choke out at last.

"W-on't do what?" She sounds panicked now.

"Don't go away like I did. Being alone that long…leaves scars. I-I couldn't stand-" I choke up and can't finish the sentence.

"Leaves scars how? You're perfect, Leah. I meant what I said about…well, all of it."

"Yeah. That's what scares me." I trail one palm down the side of her neck, and she sighs, tilting her chin to make it easier. Her white skin glows under the slants of light that are filtering through the west window.

"So you don't-I mean-" I can see fresh tears welling up in her eyes.

"No." I shake my head and she whimpers, turning away. "I mean…no, that's not the problem. I-" I gulp. "I think I'm in love with you too."

"So what is the problem?" Nessie grips my shoulders, her slightly sweet breath coming in pants. The floral scent makes me dizzy like the wood varnish did earlier. I clutch at her for balance, which has the effect of pulling her flush with my trembling body. "Don't think I don't know there are problems," she whispers. "I just…I think we deserve to be happy. Do you think we could? Oh-Oh, Leah, you're shaking. And you look so tired." She stands on her tiptoes and tilts my face down to kiss the bruises below my eyes. Her lips make me tingle so intensely that I have a hard time believing I look tired.

"Jake was smiling in my dream again," I admit as she leads me down the stairs to my basement bedroom. My heart pounds faster with each step, and I stop breathing when she lays me down on the bed to take off my shoes. Then she starts to pull up the covers as if to tuck me in for the night, and I hate how disappointed that makes me.

"No, Nessie, don't-I don't want to sleep." I sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. "I don't want to dream about Jake being happy anymore. It seems…so fucking disrespectful."

"Leah…I think I'd give anything to dream about Jake being happy. My dreams last night were pretty awful. Some of them, anyway." Even with the lights off, Nessie's silhouette looks like it's exhaling sadness, so I reach for her hand and pull her down next to me. I turn us so I can bury my face in her hair and wrap my arms around her middle. Every time I touch her, she jumps a little, but relaxes further against me right afterward.

"His hospital room?" I guess and she nods. "I'm sorry, Ness. I hope you stop dreaming about that soon."

"What was your dream about? Were your dad and Seth there too?"

"Nope, just Jake this time. Well…you were there too, actually."

She shivers like she suspects why I'm not elaborating on what she was doing in the dream.

"It was so creepy," I recount. "He was watching us…be happy, and he seemed really happy for us. And not in that way you're 'happy for your ex' when it's all about saving your own dignity." My fingers have started tracing patterns on Nessie's stomach over her shirt, like they want to make damn sure she's clear on what part she played in the dream. I feel ashamed of myself when she grabs one of my hands and more ashamed when she moves it under the fabric.

"Show me what it was like?" she asks in a small voice, but it's too much. I can't do it. Her bare skin quivers beneath my paralyzed fingers, and then she turns around to look at me solemnly, taking my face between her hands.

"I've had really intense dreams about you," she admits, and I blush, wondering if she knows I got a glimpse of one. Even though it's dark in the room, my stance seems to tell her that I'm embarrassed. "I want to show you, if that's okay?" she whispers. I nod, closing my eyes and waiting for the images. "Leah, no. Open your eyes," she says shyly. "I don't want to show you that way." I oblige, and she gets up to stand by the far wall of the room.

"I dreamed I was waiting for you at my second floor window in the big house, the night-the night we slept in the cottage." She looks at the wall as if it had a window that wasn't a slit a foot above her head. "I had hair down to here like Rapunzel, and when I saw you, you were a wolf. You were finishing eating a deer, like on the night I first saw you, but then you finished and phased back into a girl. You looked really cold, so I called to you and you used my hair to climb up and see me. I know wolves can't really get cold, but that's how it was in the dream."

Nessie turns away from the 'window' to face me, then walks over to sit next to me again.

"So anyway, I got you into my room and you stopped shivering, but you looked uncomfortable since I was the only one with clothes." She pauses, scanning my face for panic, and definitely sees some when her hands find her shirt buttons. The expression on my face doesn't stop her from undoing the blouse to reveal a camisole. I gulp embarrassingly loudly and see her flint-nipples tighten beneath the fabric. "I gave you my nightshirt since I was sleeping in this underneath." She indicates the camisole. "And I wasn't wearing these to begin with." Her fingers trail down past her beautiful bared navel and I freeze when they undo the button of her jeans.

"Don't-" I lunge forward to place my hands over hers, but she manages to get the zipper undone first. My fingers make contact with lace and silky stomach and she gasps, her muscles contracting. I know I need to pull away, but my hands insist on trying to calm her down first.

"You want to do that part instead?" she squeaks, leaning gently into the circles I'm tracing on her skin.

"Honestly…yeah. I do," I admit. My head is spinning in so many different directions.

" 'Kay. Let me help." She lies down at my side, right where the light from the narrow west window hits the bed. I kneel on the bed next to her, hands hovering just above her skin, and she lifts her hips to tug the jeans downward.

Her skin doesn't sparkle in the light, just glows, and that glow drives my confused brain wild. Long, white thighs emerge inch by inch, and it's like I'm a kid who's never seen anything glow before. Then they're around her ankles and she's kicking them onto the floor, the insides of her thighs sparkling wetly as they catch the light. When they're off, she kneels shyly on the bed, mercifully closing her legs and letting me have some powers of thought back.

"Stop fighting this." She embraces me and rubs her nose along my ear. "Please…just let me try to make you happy?"

My palms find her waist again and work their way upward this time. She shivers when I discern that she isn't wearing a bra. "You do make me happy," I tell her, and she tenses up, waiting for the "but." Then I remember how I decided that I had to try to put Jake aside for her sake. How much of a bastard would I _be_ to reject her when she'd blame herself in two different ways?

There's the matter of how much younger she is, but-_God_,_ that heartbreaking letter-_I can tell she's serious about being brave enough to try living completely on her own, and if I were her I'd be seriously tempted to run away from what reminded me of Jake. That solitary life fucks with your head like nothing else, though of course I could mess her up too.

At some point while my brain is running in circles, my lips just seal themselves to hers. I kiss her with all the confidence that my sleep-deprived mind can't conjure logically. Her tongue presses into my searching mouth and massages my own with gusto, and I know, at that point, that I've got to be brave and let what's happening happen. If I hurt her, I'll never be able to forgive myself, but pushing her away might hurt her more than I could. I promised Jake I'd take care of his girl and I will…and I want this _so much_. Too much to protest when her hot, thin fingers start fumbling with the buttons of my shirt.

She's shaking so badly that she rips several buttons off before she undoes one properly. Her nerves are affecting me too, but I really don't want to take over and rush her.

Eventually, she finishes and slides the shirt off of my shoulders, not seeming to mind how broad and rangy the wolf change made my bone structure. Then she reaches for my bra and pulls, breaking the hooks much more quickly than the shirt removal happened. More suddenly than I anticipated, I'm flat on my back with her soft little fingers setting me on fire.

"It's okay…don't get tense." Sensing my panic, she kisses my forehead and nose. Her hand strokes my hair, then moves to my neck, and I feel it linger slightly at my pulse point. Her nose and lips linger there too, just as slightly, as she kisses her way down my body.

"Does the smell of my blood…turn you on?" I pant. I've been wondering this for a while.

"Um…yeah, it smells…really good to me." She licks between my collarbones and squeezes my breast, the feeling making my whole body spasm.

"If you want to, you can try-I mean, I don't mind if you want-"

"You mean I can taste it? I mean…yeah, I've been wanting to. A little. Do you mind…where I do it?" I shake my head, curious now. "If I taste you where you're really sensitive, it can hurt more," she clarifies "but you'll also…you know. Feel more."

She kisses down my chest a little, then bathes a nipple with her warm, silky tongue. I can feel her smile as I squirm, and she bites down gently when I start to rub my thighs together. The peak of my breast is tender enough that light touches are enough to pinch and burn, and she giggles, adding jolts of vibration, when I gasp out something unladylike. Then she bites harder and lower still, at the border of where my skin darkens and pebbles. I feel a stab of pain and then the throbbing pressure eases like she's releasing a tight clamp from around my skin. I get pleasantly dizzy and warm as she drinks, and it tingles when she licks the healing skin afterward.

"Did you like it?" she asks anxiously, but seems happy with my nod and smile. "I mean…I really liked it." She licks her lips. I think she likes the way I look at her when her mouth is all stained red, taking it as a cue to unbutton my jeans with more competence than earlier.

I help her get the jeans off of me and shrug them onto the floor, but I don't let her push me back down. Instead, I slip my fingers under the hem of her camisole, and she squeaks as I yank it over her head.

"It's only fair that I get to taste you back," I whisper hoarsely. She yelps as I squeeze one nipple hard and give the other a long, teasing lick. There's that fruity nectar taste again, the one that goes perfectly with her flower scent.

I start lavishing her very full breasts with very wet kisses, and at first it makes her squirm and moan deliciously. Then I get the feeling that her squirms are conveying impatience, and I tense again as she guides my hand down her stomach.

"You want me to do you first?" she asks, acquainting me with the wetness between her thighs. I can't not touch her, despite my cold feet, and I love the noises she makes. "I wouldn't…mind," she pants, "it's just…I've…never done…anything like this…before. I don't…know what…I'm doing."

"No, you don't," I whisper into her ear. "Promise you'll say if you want me to stop?"

"Promise," she moans. Such a sexy sound. Before I know it, I'm grabbing her panties and they're off faster than you would believe.

"You like this?" I ask, rubbing gently at her clit. She spreads her knees wider and mewls sweetly. When I can tell she's getting close, I roll on top of her and kiss her again, knowing it'll be more intense if her range of body motion is restrained.

When she's done arching hard against me and crying out as I suck on her neck, I roll to the side and watch her flushed face as she gets her bearings. She turns a beatific smile on me, a smile that makes it hard to be nervous.

"So you tasted me here…" She smirks, cupping her breast like she wants me to retard-drool. "Do you want to…anywhere else?"

"God yeah," is my witty response. "Remember to say if you want me to stop?" She rolls her eyes. "Like I'd ever- _Oh, Eep!_" she yelps as I dive between her thighs and press her knees apart. She props herself up to watch me as I begin to work my tongue in, but soon falls back and gets happily acquainted with coarser ways to express herself.

Once Sam tried to tell me I tasted like some implausible shit like gardenias, and I wouldn't let him down there again until he'd admitted he'd been full of bullshit. Little did I know that certain freaks taste like fruity lip gloss all the way down. I enjoy myself quite a bit more than I've ever enjoyed anything to do with fruity lip gloss, but naturally get somewhat worried when Ness starts insisting on returning the favor.

"I taste like a normal person, Nessie. It's gross. Not delicious like this." I push her down on the bed and kiss her passionately, making her taste the nectary residue on my tongue.

Nessie breaks off the kiss before I'm ready to be done and stares me down, licking her lips. "The delicious part of that isn't me," she says. "I think I like the taste of normal person. And stop trying to distract me."

She smacks my ass and I try to smack her back, and one very hot tussle ensues. Eventually she pins me face down on the bed and starts grinding her thigh into my ass. I want her so, so bad right now, just…not exactly in that way? I've never been a fan of having someone go down on me; come to think of it, maybe that's partly why I never realized I liked girls. I have trouble relaxing and enjoying myself when I'm all spread open like that, with nothing to do with my hands or my brain but worry what I look, feel, and taste like.

"It's kind of creepy for you to do it to me if you don't want me try it on you," Nessie pouts. "There was this guy in a book I read once who never let his lovers give him pleasure back, and for him it was this messed up power play thing. Like, he wanted to be able to leave them and not care and have them care a lot, and it was all 'cause his mom messed him up really bad. She was this OCD freak who didn't punish him when he did drugs and killed her dog by accident and lied about it and-"

"Okay, okay." I manage not to laugh, but am feeling a tad more relaxed now. "And here I thought the Cullens read nothing but wholesome classics all the time."

Ness looks indignant. "_Infinite Jest_ is _so_ a classic! Well, my mom and Jasper don't think so, but they're just being old stick-in-the-muds."

"Whatever. Let's get this over with." I cover my eyes and spread my legs.

I try to relax-really, I do-but it's clear she hasn't done this before. I don't mean that in a snobby way, like I have experience with sex gods or anything, but it feels like she's performing some kind of field mapping expedition. Maybe it would be sexy if _I_ were sexy, but I'm not, and the scrutiny's…weird. Pretty soon she gives up and nestles into my side with a very sad expression.

"I'm sorry. I wish I were better," she mumbles, making me feel awful about my hangup. It makes me angry at the bastards who made the phrase "it's not you; it's me" cliched and meaningless.

"Girl, that moan you make when you come apart has got to be the sexiest thing ever. You couldn't top it no matter what you tried to do to me."

"But I want this to be good for you." _Fuck_; she's about to cry. I feel like the worst person in the world, but feeling that way isn't really helping with the relaxing.

"You want me to enjoy myself? Then let me hear you make that sound again." I start itsy-bitsy-spidering my fingers up her thigh until she finally lays back to let me take care of her.

A/N: So how did I do with the lemon debut? I would love to know what went right/wrong with that, and with this chapter in general.

If you're not tired of my current dream kick, you may be interested in a one shot I just posted featuring canon Bella/Edward, narcotic-induced free association, and Twilight-ified Alice in Wonderland :)


	14. Letting Go

A/N: SecretlySeverus and BelleDean are awesome for checking and rechecking this chapter. Hope you enjoy! Also, if you're looking for more stuff to read, check my profile for a link to my new TLKF rec of a great James and Victoria story.

_"And this is the simple truth-that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life." -Soren Kierkegaard_

_~Renesmee~_

"Leah, I'm sorry I couldn't…that I wasn't-"

"Don't you dare wish you were different." We're lying knee to knee in soaked, knotted sheets, and even our voices sound over-stimulated. "I'm serious," Leah pants on. "Do I look…fucking…unsatisfied?"

"I don't know what 'satisfied' should look like," I admit.

"Then open your goddamn eyes." 'Goddamn' comes out as a mumble, which means she's psyching herself up to say something. I want to know what it is, and I really wish that she weren't afraid to tell me.

"If you were any different," Leah mumbles at the mattress, "you wouldn't be you. We-I'd be alone still."

"Leah, no! I'm here," I blubber, throwing myself on top of her.

"Need…to breathe…" She could be joking around, except that her body's gone stiff all over. It's not the first or even the tenth time she's started to open up and I've made her so uncomfortable she stops.

"I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep-I'll let you breathe." I hug myself and imprison my hands in my armpits. A Nessie parody is whirling around my brain singing "Noooo! I'm heeere" in a Viking helmet…_when_ will I freaking grow_ up_ and learn how to stop embarrassing us both?

"I'll be better next time, Leah. I promise," I whisper. "Better at the sex and…everything."

"You never listen, do you?" The words sound like liquid adoration. I don't trust myself to do anything but meet her smoldering gaze, but that connection seems to melt our problems away.

o00o

In the morning, I sense that my hair is gross and frizzy in the extreme, but it's odd to remember how much that would have bothered me 24 hours ago. It's like before Leah told me she loved me, I felt inadequate in every way, but now I can't waste my energy on that insecurity crap anymore. Leah needs me to act sure of myself, even if I'm not, so she'll be able to trust me and lose control with me. This thing we're so close to having together…I want it so bad it scares me; I think it's our only hope for putting our sad, broken lives back together.

Leah's head is my chest and I love her breath on my skin; I just wish she weren't facing away from me. If I crane my neck over the top of her head, I can see fragments of smiles on her lips, and it just takes a little bit of craning and contorting to see that they're actually fragments of words. I think I see my name-though that might be wishful thinking-along with pleas like "yes" and "I want you." It gives me a lump in my throat that hardens when she starts mouthing, "how do I save you, Jacob?" At that point, I can't resist touching her hair and squirming to kiss her forehead; it jostles her enough that she stirs awake and wraps her arms tightly around me.

"Don't leave me, Ness," she mumbles, squeezing her trembling limbs around me.

"I'm not," I gasp, trying not to let her grip affect my voice. My heart sinks when she lets go anyway and stares like I'm not supposed to be here.

"Shit! Do your parents know where you are?" She pulls the sheet around her body with a _whoosh_.

"It's okay, Leah. I texted my mom. She was happy I came to talk to you." I pull my knees up to my chest, sad that we're starting to cover ourselves up already.

She snorts. "'Talking' and 'fucking' were two different things, last time I checked. I suppose Bella thinks this was some kind of slumber party?"

"Actually, no. I told her I loved you and she thought I should let you know."

"I thought…she didn't like me." Leah's monotone is cracking, but I hate that she's trying to hold onto it.

"Maybe she didn't before, but she wants me to be happy."

"Okay, but what about Eddie? Isn't girl-on-girl action just one of those things that dead Victorians can't deal with?"

I look at the floor. "He's stubborn, but he isn't impossible. I mean…could he seriously think the gay thing is worse than taking my mom's human future away from her? He did that for love, and he loves me too. I think it'll be okay."

"So you haven't tried to tell him."

"No, but Leah-he has to know something about us."

When Leah doesn't say anything, I cup her face and slide my tongue between her hard, tense lips. She doesn't respond right away, but when she does, I'm instantly flat on my back.

"I don't…want to talk…about…my family right…now," I pant when she bites above my collarbone.

We eventually make it into the bathroom for a shower that's fun, if a bit pointless. I rub Leah's soapy scalp with gusto and she kneels between my legs to make it easier, and soon she's making me produce new sweat as fast as the old sweat washes away. She lets me wash her everywhere and likes it, I think, but turns the water off before I can prolong things.

"Now what the fuck do we do?" Leah traces my swollen lips with her thumb. "No offense girl, but put on yesterday's clothes and you'll be the picture definition of 'walk of shame.'"

"Good thing I brought new clothes then." I smirk. "I _did_ come over to seduce you."

Leah goes to get my backpack, shaking her head, and I scrutinize her face as she returns. I don't want to be a nuisance if she has things to do, but I really don't want to go home yet.

"New clothes aren't gonna help that much." Leah holds the bag to her chest. "Are you…uh, planning to come clean to your folks right away?"

"I was trying not to think about that," I admit. Honestly, my mind is so steeped in Leah that I doubt I could hide much from Edward.

o00o

"You're…a genius…Leah." I growl under my breath at the stupid alpha buck that got away. Everyone but Edward will _totally_ believe that my over-flushed look is just from hunting. It's not that I want to keep things a secret for long; I just need some time to figure things out first. "Uh, Leah?" Guess I've lost her again. _Damn_ that girl moves fast.

When I squint, I can spot her in the center of the herd, moving with the deer that escaped me. I'm sure she's about to phase and take him down, but at the last second she goes for one of his cronies. An old deer that maybe deserves to get 'culled,' but is probably made of solid gristle.

She kills him with one deadly flick of her teeth, and even with fur she looks sexy. I wait for her to dig in, licking my lips in anticipation, but instead she turns toward me and phases.

"You want a drink?" She saunters over, looking psyched from the chase and the kill.

"He probably tastes awful." I try to grimace, which is hard when I'm gaping at Leah's body. "And you could have had the one who looked the juiciest!"

She shrugs. "Oh. Yeah. Deer are fun to track, but I can't stand killing the healthy ones. Don't know why I feel that way, but it takes a lot of the fun out of the wolf thing."

"Were you a vegetarian before?"

"Hell no. Deer have just always been…my favorite animal, I guess. Very third grade, I know."

"I think it's sweet." Leah makes a face and starts to turn away. "Wait, Leah? Don't phase yet. Didn't Helen say the Quileutes used to have spirit anim-"

"_I don't believe what that bitch says_."

The strain in Leah's voice makes my heart hurt, and I scramble half to my feet, thinking to hug her, but she sees what I'm doing and tenses her jaw, so I force myself to sit down again.

"I get why you hate Helen so much," I say. "I hate her for putting all that pressure on you."

"I don't know what I was thinking when I brought you there."

"Why? I'm glad I know the story, even if it isn't all true, and it would've hurt you to tell me yourself."

"It turned out okay, but they could have-I thought they were gonna try to put pressure on you too."

"You mean, come up with a myth that says _I'm_ supposed to help save the tribe? But I'm not even Quileute. And the vampires are bad guys in most of your stories, so why would I be destined to do something _good_?"

"You're right; you're right. I was just worried 'cause Helen pestered me so much about wanting to meet you. She-" Leah clears her throat. "She actually started pestering me the day we all got back to Forks. Saying you had to know the 'whole truth' about imprinting. I thought she was right, but that it wasn't really my business. Plus, I like telling her to fuck off."

"So she pesters you a lot?"

"No, that's another weird thing. She and Hermie are such recluses that people tend to forget they exist. Even though our tribe is really fucking small, I didn't meet them 'til after I changed." Sadness flashes through Leah's eyes and I grit my teeth against the impulse to comfort her. "Helen showed up on my doorstep the day after it happened; my parents hadn't even told anyone yet, but they'd sent Seth to stay with our aunt and raised all our blinds, so I guess it didn't take a genius to figure it out. So anyway, Helen barged in, I somehow didn't kill her, and she was like, 'you're destined for greatness. Good luck!' The other wolves found the idea of me being important pretty hilarious." She rolls her eyes. "I went to see Hermie and Helen a couple more times, but they never made much sense, and then I figured they might ignore me if I started ignoring them. They did ignore me 'til you came along. That's why I was worried they had it in for you."

"I wish you'd been right about them having it in for me." It's an easy wish to make. "Maybe the prophecy wouldn't stress you out so much if there were two of us to split up the pressure." At the moment, I don't think I'd care if I were 'destined' to walk on water; Leah is opening up to me and everything else seems beside the point.

"It's hard to be stressed when you're looking at me like that, Ness. I should be scared as hell, but I'm not."

She doesn't tense at all when I tackle her this time, and we roll down the gentle slope of the clearing. I've never smelled anything more intense than our pheromones dissolving in the dew. She sighs when I finger her hipbones and opens her legs when I trace the hollows inside them; I don't know if it's the smell or the hunting energy or me, but she's needier and freer than last night.

I dip my hand between her legs and circle my thumb where I know she wants it. She rewards me with a short, sharp hip-grind, but turns her face away and I don't like it. I want her to let go because she wants me and trusts me, not because she's scared and needs release, so I roll onto my hands and knees with her shoulders and hips pinned underneath me.

Leah looks chagrinned that I'm halting things, but not entirely surprised. I stare her down, willing her to see what I need, what _we_ need.

"I want you to eat _that_," I hiss, flicking my head toward the fallen deer. "Get your strength up, 'cause when you're done, I'm gonna drink _this_." I nuzzle her neck, then bite it and take a long, slow lick of blood.

I hold Leah at arm's length while her neck wound heals, and we stare into each other's eyes. It's a gooey moment conceived in kinkiness, and Leah seems okay with it _en balance_. Encouraged, I nuzzle her neck again and don't bite down this time, giving her comfort she can stomach now that we've established how badass we are.

When we part, she saunters slowly toward the deer, giving me time to admire her ass. Just before phasing, she gets down on all fours and crawls to drive me absolutely crazy. I get her back by performing a very dorky strip tease while she scarfs down the old, stringy wolf meat.

There's nothing to do but touch myself once all the clothes are off, and that's when Leah's deer gets abandoned. We roll in a furry blur down to where the slope of the clearing steepens, and from there it's a bruising tumble onto a stream bank sheltered by pine trees.

The speed of the tumble makes it playful and I get a competitive thrill from landing on top, but Leah phases before I can nip her under-chin fur, and then the mood changes entirely. We get very aware of the murmuring water, and my bite turns out serious and sensual. I lift my head and lick my lips and our smiles bubble lazily to the surface.

"I love you," she gasps, and her knees drift apart, opening like a flower on her exhale. I sit back on my heels, just drinking in the sight until she holds out her hand and says "please."

I take her hand and place my other hand on the ground, supporting myself above her, and she steadily moves our joined hands to the inside of her thigh. I lick my lips and savor the look of uncontrolled craving in her eyes, trying to display my feelings to her like she's displaying her body to me. Still supporting my weight on my arm, I lean forward to kiss her tenderly, massaging her thigh in time with the searching movements of our lips.

"Please," Leah sighs again. I suck longer and harder on her lip. Since she can't say anything, she laces our fingers together and guides my thumb to where she's swollen, rewarding me with a throaty sigh when I start to rub her slickness upward.

We keep our eyes open as I kiss her one last time, then sit back and nuzzle where I'm rubbing. She spreads a little wider as I bite into her thigh and rub her wetness with a slowly building urgency, and she's already close when I raise her knee so the blood trickles down to where I want it.

"This is-_fuck-_so right," she whispers, gripping my hand like a scared child. I lick once between her shaking legs, but freeze when the whites of her eyes roll to leer at me.

"So _right_," she hisses again, but I'm honestly getting scared. I had no idea that pleasure could look so much like pain. She starts to come down when I hesitate too long, so I touch her cheek, rushing to explain why I stopped. Without meaning to, I get her excited again by showing her snapshots of my ecstasy from yesterday, cutting to the scary rolling of her eyes and asking if the two were really the same thing. Then she shocks me by touching my face and showing me…pleasure. Her own pleasure.

"How…?" I'm speechless. That wasn't my memory; Leah was woven in like a watermark.

"You know how we can see each others' thoughts when we're wolves? A lot of the guys can show stuff to their imprints. When…you know, getting it on makes them feel all connected and animalistic. I was never able to do it with anyone before." Leah furrows her brow, touches my face again, and shows me a weaker jolt of her pleasure. It still feels amazing, but we can both tell the new mind-channel's closing fast.

I lick between her legs more forcefully this time, stretching to keep my hand on her face, and try to clear my mind of everything but what I want to make her feel. My lingering worries can't matter right now, and neither can my family or her tribe; nothing can matter but the bliss beginning to flutter and vibrate between us.

After a minute or two, Leah reaches for my face and I can see her pleasure coiling from inside her. A few of her emotions still worry me-spasms of fear, shock, hope-but she digs her nails into my temple and hisses, "Don't you dare stop. I love you."

I'm prepared, at least, for the way her body spasms, and the tremor lasts excitingly long. Her hand falls from my face and she rides it out for thirty…sixty seconds. A minute of knowing we've beaten the odds to find perfect joy after heartbreak.

Sadly, a minute is all we get before worries creep back into my mind. It's strange that she hasn't come down yet, so I straighten up to peer into her eyes. There's ecstasy but none of the peace that should follow, and she doesn't respond when I shake her. I shout her name, and…nothing…it's the same numb nothing.

She smiles, at first, through the rain of my tears, the way both of us enjoy wet weather, but then she starts to shake violently enough that it looks like the tears are hers. It's hard to tell if she's breathing through the tremors and even-even if she's _in_ there. Her ribs are bruising but I cling to her harder and harder-I have to find her…I _have_ to!

At last, Leah spasms and my heart spasms too. Both definitely pain, not pleasure. I peer into her eyes and once again see nothing, but it's good I've taken one last look, for no sooner have I seen that her lashes frame a void than her features start to blur right in front of me. Her eyes bug out into marbles, but the rest of her contracts and shrinks; I clutch at the air and fall forward, pinning this bug-eyed…_thing_ underneath me.

It's a wolf, but not a wolf I know-really just an overgrown dog. I can barely feel its claws brush my skin as it scratches and tears at my clothes. There's no sex appeal or elegance or _Leah_ about it, and there's no way it could take on a vampire; I'm sure of that even as it butts its ugly head and escapes out from under my numb body. Part of me wonders if I should care it's getting away, but I hate it too much for not being Leah, so I just curl up and hug my knees against the emptiness that's gnawing me to pieces.

An ugly mental voice screams deja vu, but it's wrong-this isn't like losing Jake. Jake died because of a time bomb that nobody could stop, but whatever just happened with Leah, we caused it. We beat the odds and connected and it was perfect like I knew would be; as scared as I am, I just _know_ that what we did can't have been wrong. For better or for worse, I believe in fairy tales, and if I stopped believing now, I'd fall apart. I _can't_ fall apart, not when I have to get her back and I don't know how.

A/N: Sorry about recent posting delays; RL is smacking me around at the moment. Whatever you're thinking, I'd love to hear from you. Reviews are great motivation to write :)


	15. The Alpha Stag

A/N: Hey! Remember me? Nessie is anxiously waiting to find out why Leah changed into a non-magical wolf, so I won't ramble. Just have to thank Reamhar and SecretlySeverus and hang my garlic to ward off the lawyers of Stephanie Meyer. Enjoy!

_"To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgement, to read at all" -Harold Bloom_

_~Renesmee~_

I stay by the stream for as long as I can smell her. 'Til the wind sweeps her scent away too. All that's left is the cold and the wet and a fog like the fog filling my brain.

The fog…the word _gone_…all bad. Very bad. I jump up and shake my head so hard my teeth gnash. I remember Leah saying, _Don't you dare stop,_ and_ I love you_, and I'm crying but the fog inside me is clearing. It seeps back when I remember she's out there, maybe scared, maybe-

"She's out there, goddamnit!" I scream aloud, scrambling up to the meadow.

My deer-trampled clothes are where I left them, so I dress. Leah's clothes are there too and I get to smell them. Then I tuck them, folded, into my bag, since she'll need them, but the shirt's missing buttons-they popped off when she phased? I look for an hour and can only find one and my tears come back, since I failed. I have to take care of Leah's things and her life while she's off where I can't take care of her. She needs me to take care of her, I know that now, and mind fog will not help me do that.

Taking care of Leah…getting her back…how can I? I'm a kid. I need home and my parents and Esme. But I can't go home and be pampered right now, because Sue would want to know. I have to tell her. But if she doesn't understand what happened-if she thinks her other child is…_no_. I can't just tell her Leah's gone if I don't know where.

o00o

The path to the cottage seems crumblier than last time, at least compared to running on the road. I know I _shouldn't_ run on the road-that cars could see me-but I have to be fast. I need answers.

I burst in without knocking, and it's good, I think, that Helen looks pleased and not confused. But what kind of person looks pleased like that when I'm sure I look frightened as hell?

"I did something bad?" is what comes out of my mouth, even though I've been trying to talk myself out of it.

"Very, very bad," Helen says, grinning from ear to ear, "From the dog oppressors' point of view." Neither she nor Hermie stops knitting until I throw the knotted up needles on the ground.

"No more…_fucking_ riddles. Is Leah going to be okay? How do I find her?"

Hermie and Helen exchange a look, and I grit my teeth as Hermie calmly picks up their knitting. Laying hers on the coffee table, she crosses the room and retrieves a very old book from one of the shelves.

"The Redeemer's mind," she reads, "will be steeped in Quileute magic; magic more potent than the tribe has seen in centuries. Her true self will be divided against the wolf that makes her shape-shift, and the wolf will be powerless to determine her lover. Un-imprinted, she will mate a blood enemy of the wolves, and their union will free her from her bondage. When that is done, she will at last find the spirits of those who were freed from their wolves by death."

"That doesn't make any sense!" I blurt out. "If I were such a threat to the wolf spirits, why would Jake have imprinted on me?"

Helen sips her tea. "Contradictions abound in scriptures. Perhaps Jacob imprinted to divert you from the union in the prophecy, or perhaps you can puzzle out a better explanation if you play your part attentively."

"So you think this is some kind of fun game? Well I don't! And I'm guessing you never shared that info with Leah; she didn't seem to think we were 'destined' to be together. What prophecies did you tell her about to make her think she had to save the tribe?"

"You're correct that we withheld some information." Helen might as well be talking about the weather, and I wish I could punch her just to roughen up her voice. "Nothing complicates falling in love more than claims of predestination."

I snort. "I can think of a lot of things that complicate falling in love, but go on."

"We paraphrased and edited the prophecy for Leah. Her faith may be confused, but her allegiance to her tribe is real. What we told her was enough to imbue her with the compulsion to fulfill her responsibilities."

"Wait-prophecy _singular_? Like, she's been torturing herself for years because of four stupid sentences in your book?"

"She was clearly correct to do so. Unless I'm wrong to think your agitation means she transformed in some way?"

"Leah's gone, Helen." My voice cracks. "I pushed her over some edge and she changed into this stupid non-magical wolf. She was scared before it happened, but she told me to keep pushing her. I trusted her, and she-she trusted you. Now she's…gone."

I cover my face with my hands, and I jump when Hermie's arms encircle my waist from behind. I'm not used to anything being quiet enough to sneak up on me.

"Leah trusted you, dear." Hermie walks around me and reaches to cup my cheek with her hand. "She still trusts you, wherever she is. She knows you'll figure out how to find her. You're both so special, and you're going to be happy as clams together." She pinches my cheek like my terror is just so cute. I'm starting to hate her as much as I've been learning to hate Helen.

Instead of leaving the cottage with answers and comfort, I leave with a hollow sense that there's none to be had. I don't deserve comfort, either, not when I trusted the hags just like Leah did. Leah would still be here if I'd just stopped what I was doing the instant she started to slip away-I _would_ have stopped if we hadn't both believed that something crazy was meant to happen to her. How can they live with themselves-do they honestly believe those few cryptic sentences are grounds for risking a _life_?

It's likely they're still holding out on me, but I refuse to beg for information. That would imply I still trust them, and I doubt I could ever convince them they'd made a mistake. Storming out with no goodbye seems like the best way to tell them what I think of them, but my feet wimp out when I'm still on the threshold because there's something I have to know.

"What makes you think she's alive? If she's supposed to be 'finding the spirits' of dead people?"

"Our stories do not romanticize suicide, Renesmee." _Finally_. Some passion in Helen's voice.

"Uh, what about that 'third wife' story?" I know all about my mom's favorite heroine saving her son by sicking a vampire on herself.

"An example of how the wolf spirits corrupted our legends and values to the core. I'll thank you to help end their dominion once and for all."

"I'll thank you to pretend you care about Leah." I flounce out and slam the door behind me. Then there's nothing to do but stumble down the path and hope I'll know what to do when I get to the end.

When the end of the path sneaks up on me, I start walking in the direction of La Push. It might be days-I _hope_ only days-before I know anything more than I do now; I should have told Sue what happened right away and there's use no delaying it at this point. Especially when delaying it would mean running home and letting my family take care of me like a child, a child who wasn't ready for sex and who did something wrong and is paying for it. No…it was natural and it was good and Leah will be fine. Maybe Sue will somehow understand what happened.

I have to keep upping the mental volume on my pep talk just to force my feet to keep moving. By the time I can smell the salt from the coast, my thoughts are shriller than Alice after fashion week. _Leah's okay; I can handle all this; I'll think of something comforting to say_…it loses meaning every time it swirls around my head. I'm sick of words, and only hot, familiar arms could comfort me at this point.

I discover I was wrong about that last part when I bump into Edward by the roadside. His cold, hard embrace seems to shield me at once from the worst of the pain and panic. We share one of those rare moments when his mind reading is a godsend, and he kisses my cheeks in such a way that I don't need to read his mind back.

"Let's go home." He rubs my back in circles. "You can stay with your mother, and I'll return here. I've seen enough to tell Sue what happened as well as you can, love."

I shake my head, but can't get the words out. Edward sighs and holds me tighter.

"Show her yourself if you must. But I've just been to look for you at her place, and I daresay her annoyance with me might blunt the force of the news for her slightly."

o00o

Sue does look annoyed when she ushers us inside, but affecting the annoyance looks like effort. There's tiredness underneath, and she offers us chairs as if our presence, the chairs, and her time mean equally little to her. The tiredness cracks a little when she cringes, shrinking backward, at my announcement that I need to show her something.

She proffers her tense, lined face to my fingertips but turns away after less than a second, not seeming to notice how my arm and fingers stretch to prolong our contact.

"I won't stop 'til I find her. I'll do whatever it takes," I call out. It's like I'm still trying to comfort myself.

The feeling of self-indulgence intensifies when Sue smiles like I've said something mildly amusing, but then she opens her mouth and I can't believe my ears.

"Do what you need to do. But thanks. Guess you made my little girl happy in the end."

"In the _end-No_!" I look wildly at Edward to make sure she wasn't being sarcastic.

"The past six years weren't living. Not for her. Lately, she was acting alive again. Not gonna lie and say I get it or I like you. Just…thanks. For giving her what her brother had. Makes me care about you enough to hope you'll give up on this miracle cure idea."

"L-Leah wouldn't give up. She never gave up hoping she could figure the Redeemer thing out."

"Funny. I seem to have missed how that's a good thing."

I have no answer, and Edward doesn't offer one either. His eyes are darting from me to Sue like he doesn't know whether to snap at her or agree with her. I don't want Sue to get snapped at, but I couldn't bear to hear her keep talking, so I take Edward's hand and smile two silent thank-you's. The door whispers shut behind us, shattering the pin-drop quiet with its echo.

"Let's go home now, Nessie." Edward's voice is all velvet and no power, like I won't object and he's just stating the obvious. At home, someone will always take care to remind me of the obvious; I can rest and stop paying attention to anything. The idea is dangerously appealing, but I can't…not now. If I rest, I won't be able to get up again. I'll stop living like Leah stopped living before she met me, except that no one will be there to snap me out of it. Not if I can't find Leah right now, while my faith that she's out there somewhere is keeping me functional. My visit to the cottage took a toll on that faith, and at this rate my hope will be gone within the hour.

o00o

"Tell me what your dad does to help people have faith," I say without preamble when Angela opens her door. I squeeze Edward's hand to signal he can head home without me now.

"Nessie, y-you're scaring me! What on Earth happened to you?" Despite her words, she's in command of herself. Far more concerned than scared. I think it's time to test my theory that Bella underestimated Angela; that my friend is special enough to deal with the special facts of my life. Once we're sitting in her living room with the door closed, I lean forward and lock my eyes with hers.

"Angela, can you keep a secret?" She pales a little but nods like this has been a long time coming and she's ready. She may be ready, but I'm not, so I close my eyes to gather my thoughts, keeping them closed as I reach for her cheek and start at the beginning. By the beginning, I mean the beginning of my life; there's not a heck of a lot to fill her in on. Much as I'd like to see how she reacts, I keep my eyes closed, not wanting to break my focus.

Try as I might to keep my story somewhat linear, my mind is too full of recent events. Leah's change breaks to the surface again and again before I'm finished explaining Jake's death. Despite the confusion, Angela sits like a statue 'til I have to pull away and see her reaction. She looks sorry for me, but there's a brightness in her eyes, and she lurches toward my hand when I draw back.

"There was magic in them…_always_. I knew it," she breathes. "Well, I never said it out loud before, even to myself." Her eyelids lower ashamedly. "You have to come up with serious reasons for studying folk and myth in a university. But a whole other world? Right here, all this time? I've always half-believed, and…it's beautiful, Nessie."

It's like Bella's rambling stories about waking up immortal and seeing the world anew. My claustrophobic world…_magical? Beautiful?_ Angela's eyes are making me believe it. My eyes are tearing up like hers, and my tear is the first to fall. When it breaks, it seems to jar Angela back down to earth just a little.

"Oh Nessie, I'm so stupid-so insensitive." She gets up and kneels by my chair. "What happened to Leah-that looked so awful. It's just…I'd wondered about Bella for so long."

"I understand." I try to smile, but now the floodgates have unleashed my scared tears.

"Here, I'll tell you what. You should rest-you look awful." She's pulled me halfway to her bedroom before I protest.

"I can't rest 'til I figure it out, Ange. If I stop trying and hoping-"

"Don't be silly. You showed me what happened and what those mystics said, and that's a really good starting point for research."

"But what is there to research? Hermie and Helen are, like, Quileute legend _experts_, and if they couldn't tell me anything useful-"

"Hey. Give me some credit." Angela's soft voice has grown an edge. "I've got a pretty big library of Quileute legends at this point-canonical ones and all kinds of maverick ones. Your 'experts' sound pretty ideological, like they wouldn't remember anything that doesn't have an anti-wolf, pro-feminist agenda. Quileute mythology as a whole just isn't that simple-it has more internal contradictions-so they probably aren't experts in the whole set of legends that might be useful. Maybe there are stories about what happened to Leah that just aren't Hermie's and Helen's cup of tea. Go to sleep, and I'll wake you if I find something."

I remember how I stopped trusting Helen when she said that Quileute mythology was full of contradictions, using that as an excuse to avoid answering my questions about holes in her logic. Angela isn't saying it in quite the same way, and my heart wants to trust what she's saying. It's nice that she hasn't made promises or said, like, she'll wake me 'when' she finds something; it'll help me sleep to know I don't have to tease apart lies from what hope there might be in her words.

Sleep I do, and the next thing I perceive is a glow behind Angela's window blind. It's crazy how something as simple as dawn can soothe such a big ache inside me. Of course, that's only 'til my stomach knots up because Angela wasn't the one to wake me. Did she say the thing about research just to get me to sleep, then crash right after I did? I hurry off to find her after pulling on the filthy jeans I left in a heap on the floor.

The house is deathly quiet, almost like Sue's, but I can make out the click-click of a keyboard. The typing sounds lead me to the entrance of the kitchen, but Angela doesn't notice me walk up behind her. She's too wrapped up in taking notes on her laptop and flipping through a ream of smudgy printouts.

I'm dying to know what leads she's found, but I don't dare move or rustle. At the moment, she looks as strange and special as any member of my family, right down to the bruises that are blooming under her eyes.

I hold my breath until her printer groans to life and I let out a squeak of terror. Angela doesn't jump, just turns around and smiles in a way that gives me hope.

"There was magic in you. Always. I knew it," is the truest thing I can think of to say. I wonder what Bella will say when I show her what plain old Angela transforms to.

"What?" She blushes and touches her fingers to her lips, but quickly shakes her head and goes back to combing through files.

"Thanks for doing this…thanks so much." My eyes are tearing up with gratitude and anxiety.

"Don't thank me yet." She stops talking at once, like there isn't time to explain what she's already found.

I don't want to distract Ange or crowd her, but still, the suspense is hard to take. If I stand here totally in the dark, I'm going to snap soon and totally kill her focus. To stave that off, I settle for scanning the printouts she's shoved away and abandoned. They'll be early leads-the duds-but they should teach me a little and distract me.

The castaway printouts do divert me a little, but honestly, not in a good way. These legends clearly relate to Angela's vegetarianism thesis, but Leah didn't change while she was _eating_ for crying out loud! I have to bite my cheek to keep from screaming that Ange can't just look under the lamppost of her research interests-I mean…she must know what she's doing, but what good are stupid stories like _The glutton gets found out by his son_ and _The wolves kill the deer children_?

_The deer children!_ I'd forgotten about the epiphany I had while Leah was hunting. My inkling that the deer could be her spirit animal since she's so in tune with how it runs. The deer children story is pretty boring, unfortunately-just a parable about herbivores outsmarting carnivores. The deer stupidly go inside a pit the wolves have dug for them, but then they avoid being eaten by turning into ants and sneaking back out again.

"I thought I saw something in-uh, your mind-" Angela falters, but recovers quickly. I can't believe how well she's dealing with my powers and all this insanity. "I saw something about how Leah is especially in tune with deer. How she's unusually good at hunting them but doesn't like to do it because her skill comes from instinctive kinship of some kind. It fits with most of what I've read about the old spirit animal legends."

"Cool, but-" I look down and fidget. "Does that do us any good?"

She shrugs and goes silent again, so I read the boring deer story over and over. It seems to get more inane with each repetition. I keep glancing at Angela-first questioningly, then reproachfully-but she doesn't even seem to notice when I glare at her.

Time basically stops until the printer sighs to life and I sigh even louder with relief. Whatever she's printing might be stupider than ever, but at least it'll be something new to think about. She hands me the printout with a neutral face, though it's a hopeful kind of neutral, I think.

It's a story called _The whore and her mongrel_. Ugh…I always hated it when Rose called Jake a mongrel. Still, Ange must think the story's important somehow, so I suck up my disgust and start reading.

_Once there was a seer with a talented daughter_, it begins. _Her gift was for seeing people perfectly clearly for an instant and knowing that instant's past and future. She might focus on a stranger as he wiped away one tear and be flooded with the history of his sadness: what had disturbed him, how the sadness felt inside his heart, and how that feeling would shape his actions in the future. If the man was a carpenter and his grief would drive him to make a mistake while building, the girl would warn the seer before the unsound hut could collapse. _

_Tragically, her visions changed in character when she grew from a girl into a woman. Or maybe the visions stayed the same and she began responding in a new way. Time and again, she saw an evil man perform an insignificant act of kindness, and the act bloomed into a story that was enough to drive her mad with love. She could not do otherwise than give herself to him in soul and spirit and body, and he could not do otherwise than ravish her and boast of her softness to other evil men. Every time this happened, her father threatened to banish her from the tribe, but her gift told her correctly that he lacked the strength to follow through. He even looked the other way when she escaped to the lair of a dog, trying to forget the legend of the Quileute princess who had given birth to puppies. _

_It was not the girl's father who would drive her from the tribe, but an evil man who was not quite human. A blood-drinking enemy of the tribe whose hands were as cold as his unseating heart. The pair ran from La Push beyond the reach of the warriors who would have killed him, and then the cold man nearly killed her when he ravished her at last. He left her to limp home heavy with his quickly growing child, a child that would bite her womb to shreds and go on to make a meal of the midwife. _

I clap my hand over my mouth, feeling excited and sick all at once. Angela steadies me by squeezing my shoulder, but it's a hard, demanding squeeze. She's demanding me to read more, so I take a deep breath and plough on.

_The devil mongrel child might have been killed right then, but the heartbroken seer would not allow it. He raised the girl on a diet of his blood and found her to be more gifted than her mother. Not only could she tell true stories about people, but she could share them with others through touch. She also differed from her mother in more often seeing evil in good people than the reverse. A pariah in La Push from birth, she drew more ire by revealing her neighbors' sins, but she cared little what they thought of her and craved no one's company but her grandfather's. The mongrel lived her life happily enough until her grandfather fell ill, his failing eyesight causing him to mistake poison herbs for his preferred ones. He drank them and they drove him to senselessly rave and the mongrel ran from his bedside. _

_The tribesmen who disliked the mongrel were delighted to think her a coward. But she ran because she knew her grandfather's mind better than her own-it was nowhere near the shell of his body and she wouldn't stop running 'til she'd glimpsed it. Strangely, she thought she recognized her grandfather behind the eyes of a wild goat, and the trace of recognition was so strong that she started to run with the goats and get to know them. Many of the goats were less like her grandfather than the one who had grabbed her attention, but some were even more like him, and she went to great lengths to seek these out. Eventually, she found one bearing such a strong resemblance that she clutched the goat's face and wept, consumed with longing for her grandfather and trying to decide what he would do in her position. She decided that he would not have waited with the empty body but would have sought the beloved mind as she was doing, even if he, like she, had no idea if the mind still existed elsewhere. _

_Just as the mongrel decided this, the goat gave a shudder between her hands. It turned its head and glanced at her and its presence vanished from behind its eyes. The dead eyes scared her and she clutched at the goat's shoulders, which were changing shape beneath her hands. The goat's whole body morphed and lengthened, turning human as it filled with her grandfather's essence. _

"The deer. That has to be it," I say, dropping the story without reading to the end. Angela shuts off her coffeepot and we hurry out of the house and into her car. We drive, mostly off road, to the edge of the meadow where Leah and I had hunted.

There's no sign of deer when we get there-the stupid engine made certain of that-so I open the door and hit the ground running and it's too fast for Ange but she'll understand. I have to double back soon when there are no signs of deer on the random path I took, so this time I pause to sniff the air and sprint off in a more logical direction. It still takes the better part of an hour before I'm rewarded with a scampering sound up ahead.

Deer hunting isn't my forte, and it's no great surprise when darkness falls and I still haven't caught a thing. I probably could have captured something old and slow by now, but Leah's soul mate should be the magnificent alpha and I don't want to settle for less. I think he's slowly but surely tiring out and if I just keep after him…_yes_. _Got him._ My sideways lunge has him hitting a dead tree and I land on top of him when he sprawls. For one terrifying second I realize I didn't plan this part at all, but then I grab his face and concentrate on Leah as hard as I can.

She's all I've thought about for days, so why does it feel so…_off_ right now? The thing that's off is the alpha stag, which is whimpering and struggling underneath me. I feel awful for pinning it on its side like this, and maybe the trapped leg is sprained.

I keep trying to hold Leah's essence in my mind, but one thing is rising to the surface: that Leah would _never_ mistreat a deer like I'm doing for her sake right now. There's something wrong with how I'm executing this plan, and legend or no legend, I have to stop. I release the alpha and bound a couple of paces away so it can lurch to its feet and flee. It moves quickly but unsteadily like something is definitely sprained, and I feel sick with guilt as I watch it.

I'm about to go look for Angela in defeat, but then I hear a whimper and freeze. A deer more decrepit than the one Leah killed is sprawled near the tree that tripped the alpha. Something isn't quite right with its legs or its head; it tripped on its own and fell down. One leg twitches at a strange, broken angle, and no other deer have stayed to help it or guard it.

As I bend down to stroke the soft head, which is resting near a bush of wild roses, I think of the roses that Angela gathered for me in her father's churchyard. How I set them aside for Jake's grave but decided I could keep just one to give to Leah. Wrote that letter saying that roses said "I love you" better than ferns because they were bred to say "I love you," not to live their own lives.

Tackling the alpha stag went against everything I said in that letter-I feel so ashamed for doing it. For thinking that Leah would have wanted to steal the body of the healthiest deer in the pack: the deer with the fullest life and the most responsibilities. Hopefully it's less a body-stealing than a sort of melding of souls, but still-that deer's life was full and complete, and it would have had to give up a lot to meld with Leah. This deer on the ground on the other hand…its big, fevered eyes are breaking my heart. They're full of bright longing, but fading fast, and it's my friend, not my adversary, as I touch its face. It's easy to fill my head with thoughts of how Leah would want to save this deer. Realistically, she'd settle for ending its misery, but she'd do a lot to give it its life back. It's life is in reach this time…I'm sure of it…I close my eyes and try to focus my whole being.

Maybe there's movement and shuddering going on, but I can't afford to let anything distract me. I know my focus on Leah is good when I think I can hear her calling my name, my attention so steeped in her essence that it's like I can feel her arms around me. The embrace gets tighter and the voice gets louder and she's calling me other names than Nessie-pretty mean names. I don't let the mean names shake my focus but then I feel a slap across my face, and before I can remind myself about not breaking my focus, my eyes are open and blinking. I'm in Leah's arms in the grass for real and we're kissing and giggling our heads off.

A/N: Latent Prints is coming to a close soon…only a couple of chapters left :/ Now's your chance to tell me what you think, and I really hope you'll do that. Regardless, you guys are awesome for sticking out all this weird.

A bit of parting self-pimpage: My one shot Drink Me won a judge's choice award in the plot bunny contest! The designation, ironically enough, was "Fic most likely to be protested by PETA," so I guess you should go read if you'd like to taste the other ideological pole of animal craziness. Not that I would ever endorse non-tree-hugging-type stuff-it's James's cronies being evil.


	16. Explanations

A/N: I am update fail as never before. So very sorry. Enough of my teasing, though-here is a bucketload of answers! Goodness knows I don't own Twilight, or I would have planned the science slightly better. I shouldn't complain though-this story came to me when I was being OCD about filling in Twi-science details. If you'd like to hear more about that, check my profile for a link to my writeup of this story for Under the Radar. I know, I know, its claim about my updating speed is obsolete, but it won't be this long till the next chapter. Pinky swear. Props to my fabulous betas Reamhar and SecretlySeverus, and congrats to SecretlySeverus on her upcoming nuptials! (She wanted me to apologize for the wedding stuff slowing down her beta-ing, but most of the slow was my fault, I'm afraid :( ) Enjoy!

_~Leah~_

Dr. Leech makes my skin crawl-especially the polished bedside manner crap. So why isn't my skin crawling now? He just needle-sucked my blood and is rubbing the tourniquet mark like I'm a sissy, and maybe I _am_ a sissy, 'cause I'm not slapping him away. What can I say…being a pain-in-the-ass patient is not so appealing when you're desperate to know what happened to you.

After Ness brought me back, she was like, "Leah! You're different!" At first, I didn't believe her. Her words hurt my feelings and really threw me for a moment, a moment that was long enough for her grandpa to whisk me away. I spent most of the car ride to the hospital wondering what the hell Ness meant by what she said, but then I felt leech fingers on my forehead and knew she was right. Right as fucking usual. Dr. Leech had been touching me for a moment before I noticed it, and for a wolf, that's freakier than failing to notice dry ice burn. I've lost that gut-level knowledge that leeches are the enemy, which, at this point, feels like not knowing who I am.

Not knowing who I am apparently helps me remember who I was. My head is filling with cross country routes I'd forgotten about. The other runners called me a freak, and it used to feel good. It meant they wished they could do what I did. Be more like me.

Why I am thinking about _running_, of all things? It hits me-my _body_ is different. I used to be more streamlined, and I'm like that again. My big, awkward wolf bones have morphed back to normal. The thing is that I don't remember why I liked this body so much. I don't know how to work it anymore. Those old cross-country routes are really close, but I walk like I have sea legs, so I'm not really tempted to try them. I also want to know what I look like, sort of, but the sea legs are an excuse to not look for a mirror.

At this point, Dr. Leech walks in with a clipboard. Funny…I forgot he ever left the room.

"Nessie is waiting outside for you, Leah," he says. My heart pounds and I open my mouth, but the words don't come. "I'll send her in soon, but I thought we should chat first without distractions." I nod and he looks daunted like he isn't sure where to begin. So much the better, I guess-we can "chat" about what _I_ think is important.

"So when I disappeared, or whatever, I left this non-magical wolf behind?" I prompt him. "That part of me is gone, and I'm not a werewolf anymore?" He told me this much before the blood test, when he asked me to phase for him on command and I didn't know how to anymore.

"You aren't fully human, if that's what you're asking. As for whether you're aging, I can't be sure yet. A telomerase screen should tell me more, and those results will be ready in a couple of days. I do have your DNA on file and can say with confidence that it's been altered." He presses his lips together and blinks guiltily at me. It might be funny if it weren't so fucking annoying.

"So do you always look this scared of your patients?"

"The theories I've formed about your case aren't all new," he mumbles. "I've spent a good amount of time studying your people over the years, using genetic material that I've collected illegally and unethically. The Quileute council has the power to forbid DNA studies involving anyone with ancestry in your tribe, and like most Native American leaders, they choose to exercise this right. As I understand it, they believe that genetic knowledge gives the possessor a certain power over their souls, but I was simply not strong enough to respect their wishes and ignore the opportunity of many lifetimes. Publishing my findings would have been impossible, on many levels, so I rationalized that it would be as if the knowledge had never existed."

"And _what_ gives you the right to know more about us than we know about our fucking _selves_?"

"It was always my intention to come clean when the time was right. I'm not trying to defend what I did, just explain it."

I'd say the anger I'm feeling is rational-no "blood enemy" emotional crap involved. But chewing him out would be a waste of time and energy, so I just growl for him to just tell me the fucking theories.

"When Jacob was injured during the fight with Victoria's army, I found that his DNA appeared to contain an extra chromosome pair. That was the point at which my curiosity got the better of my judgement and I began to study your people in earnest. I took the risk of letting Seth in on my secret, and he was curious enough to help me collect shed hair from other members of your tribe. Every member of the pack, in the end, was represented in my DNA library, as well as their parents and several Quileutes with no history of shapeshifting in their families."

My throat clogs up when he says Seth's name. I can't decide whether I'm angry at my brother or grateful. Both? Neither? I don't know. I just miss him a hell of a lot.

"Given that humans, vampires, and shape-shifters can all interbreed," the doc goes on, "it would seem impossible for us to have different numbers of chromosome pairs. As far as I can tell, what look like extra chromosomes are pieces of the standard chromosomes that are somehow separated and altered during the process that changes us. In the case of vampires, pieces of 2 and 7 are cut off, but they adhere to their parent chromosomes during the production of sperm and egg cells."

He's losing me fast, and I'm sure my face shows it, but I'm hoping that letting him drone on will be the fastest route to the point of all this.

"In members of your wolf-pack," he goes on, "chromosomes 2 and 7 are normal. The X chromosome, in contrast, is unusual." At first, this goes through my brain like the other mumbo-jumbo, but then I remember something.

"Wait-'X' is for 'sex,'" I recite. "Guys only have one X chromosome, but girls have two. And almost all werewolves are guys!" Really, Leah? _X is for sex?_ I've gone from wolf to junior high science dork.

"That's right!" Dr. Leech is grinning his face off like I deserve a gold star. Maybe my smarts will convince him to speed right along to the punchline.

"I found two unusual genes on the X chromosomes of the pack members," he says. "Many of your parents have them too. I believe that both genes are required to make the wolf transformation happen, but that the wolf trait is recessive."

"Recessive?" We learned about that in bio class too. "Um…that means if a girl has one fucked up X chromosome and one normal X chromosome, she's normal? But every guy with a fucked up X chromosome goes wolf?"

"Correct. Every male who carries the mutant genes will transform in the presence of vampires. You are the only female ever to transform because-"

"I'm the lucky girl with _two_ fucked up X chromosomes."

Carlisle nods. "You are the only wolf who appears to have twenty-five chromosome pairs instead of twenty-four, and both of your X chromosomes are unusual. Now, it's standard for X-linked conditions to be more common in men than in women. Hemophilia and fragile X syndrome behave this way, for example. The thing that has always perplexed me is that you are the _only_ female werewolf in history. The condition should be more prevalent in men than in women, but since men who carry the mutations reproduce as normal, female shape-shifters should be rare but by no means unheard of. According to my calculations, there should be one or two per generation, on average."

Something about this is sounding familiar. "The hags!" I exclaim. "They said something about female werewolves being 'doubly descended from Utlapa.' The first werewolf."

Carlisle nods. "Yes, he would have to be an ancestor of your father as well as your mother if he were the first to carry the unusual chromosome."

"The hags also said something about imprinting being designed to keep intermarriages like that from happening. The 'dog spirit'-" I make air quotes. "-not wanting girl werewolves to be born."

"Nessie told me what she knew of the stories," Carlisle says. "In particular, the idea that the shape-shifter line represents the coming together of spirit warriors and wolves. It seemed unlikely to be a coincidence that the unusual X chromosomes contained two unusual genes, not just one. Now, each gene produces a protein that can be detected in the blood, and before your…second transformation, when you were hospitalized last week, I observed that your blood contained high levels of just one of the proteins compared to male werewolves. The other protein was present in standard levels."

"You're losing me, Doc," I admit. I'm starting to believe I should try to understand all the mumbo-jumbo.

"You were with me when I said that you were the only wolf to carry two copies of the mutant X chromosome?"

I chuckle. "I figured that part out all by myself, remember?"

"So you did. And it seems that that doubling had the effect of changing the ratio between the products of the two genes. You express one of them more strongly than other wolves do, and the other at standard levels. I conjecture that in your blood, a 'spirit warrior gene' may, in effect, be winning out over a wolf-related gene. I also suspect that the wolf-related gene makes males wolves imprint on women with women who have no wolf blood in their families."

"Trying to keep me from being born." I nod. "Too bad about those consent forms you never got signed, Doc. I would love to see you try to publish some serious paper on the 'spirit warrior gene.'"

"Actually, you'd be surprised at how creative biologists can be when naming their discoveries. The 'spirit warrior gene' sounds hardly more fanciful than the 'Sonic hedgehog gene,' which has been studied extensively for years."

"Okay, whatever, I take the weird name thing back. Now what the hell happened to me by the stream? With Ness?"

Carlisle gets that look that doctors get when they're above being embarrassed. Must mean we're getting around to the part that involves his granddaughter and sex. "I saw you transform through Nessie's eyes," he says. "You became what appeared to be a common grey wolf. She was able to bring you back by holding your personal qualities in her mind while she touched the face of a common deer and willed you to enter its body. It would seem that the shamans gave you reason to believe that your soul shares deep kinship with the deer above other animals. Your DNA, at this point, is not quite human, but is much closer to human than deer. You have 23 pairs of chromosomes, and 2 pairs of X-linked 'pseudo-chromosomes.' The extra genetic material seems to have been altered; it still produces the shape-shifter gene, but none of the wolf gene at all."

"Wow," is all I can think of to say. Carlisle tries to get up, but I stop him.

"So how did I get so lucky?" I ask. His eyes get wide and he seems to be tongue tied. He thinks I'm talking about Ness, I realize, and but I'm not ready to talk about that yet. It's too new and too personal and there's too big a leap from Carlisle being my blood-enemy yesterday and my I-don't-know-what today. "Genetically lucky," I clarify. "How do you think a female wolf finally got born after all this time?"

"I can't say for sure…"

"But you have a theory." It's written all over his face.

"Yes, I do, but it'll take some explaining. And Nessie is anxious to see you."

I'm anxious to see her too, but it's not fair for Carlisle to have this theory and me not to know about it. "Please?" I say. "I'd rather know everything. And then Nessie can help me make sense of it."

He nods. "Not everything I learned from my DNA studies was the stuff of abstruse science. I found that Embry is without a doubt your brother. Harry was his father."

I'm too shocked to feel much of anything and I have to try to keep it that way. I have to pay attention to what Carlisle is saying and not get distracted by pain or rage.

"Your father's heart had been weak since he was a very young man. Do you remember?" Carlisle goes on.

"Um, yeah." Stuff like that is hard to forget.

"His illness always baffled me because the defect was genetic. It should have affected his life from birth. It didn't-he was healthy as a horse until twenty-four years ago, which is around when Embry was conceived."

"Just so you know, I'm really confused."

"If you'll bear with me, I'll explain everything I know. You see, carriers of a genetic abnormality are rarely exactly identical to non-carriers. Their symptoms may be subtle, but they can usually be detected by a doctor who knows what to look for. After Jacob's heart essentially self-destructed, I couldn't get Harry's heart attacks out of my head. I knew your father had carried the wolf trait, and I couldn't help wondering if that was connected to his unusual disease. I hadn't considered it my place to investigate the story behind Embry's parentage, but last week, I decided I had cause to phone an acquaintance from Embry's mother's tribe who owed me a favor. She told me that your father met Embry's mother on a visit to their reservation when you were a baby. The two of them met at a dance, and my contact claimed he'd never seen two people more attracted to each other. They left the dance together and Harry never set foot on their land again, but Embry was born nine months later."

I nod. "Dad never would have left our family, no matter what. He thought duty and responsibility were more important than anything else. He was so crazy-obsessed with being loyal that no one put him on the list of suspects for being Embry's dad."

"I suspect that his attachment to Embry's mother was an imprint of sorts, and that his heart was damaged because he broke it off. He survived for some time because his wolf genes lay mostly dormant, but his death suspiciously resembled Jacob's and Seth's. Any intern would have noticed the similarities in their autopsies."

"He and Mom were sixteen when they got married and had me. Must have been right before the wolf genes took over his brain. Semi-took-it-over, I guess you said."

Saying that reminds me of my parents' wedding photo. I've always carried one and never quite known why. I used to hold it up to the light the way you check money for a security watermark, and each time I didn't find one I'd swear that it proved the thing was a fraud. Probably, I said to myself, it had been forged by Charlie and Billy and everyone else who swore that my parents used to be in love. I was ten when I realized that whatever love was, Mom and Dad sure didn't have it. The tune in our household was duty this, obligation that, and I knew that either love was something different or poetry was the biggest scam ever.

Once I started dating Sam, I decided I knew what Mom and Dad were missing. I felt oh so bad for them in the manner of a know-it-all fourteen-year-old, so I tried to be a model daughter and thought I did a damn good job. Oh how the mighty had fallen when my dumped ass landed in my mother's lap. I never understood until now why she told me to be glad Sam had followed his heart. On some level, she must have hated that Dad had stayed out of a sense of obligation. I wonder if she knew about Embry and his mom, or if she just had a gut feeling that something had changed.

It's all too fucking much to deal with, so I lie down and press on my eyeballs. I can't say which is more jarring: my crazy transformation, or finally knowing the truth about my parents. I know it's the truth the same way I always had a feeling that their wedding picture was fake. Except that now I don't believe the picture is fake anymore, since I know how fast a wolf change can fuck up love.

_A wolf change can fuck up love!_ I mouth in horror. I was in love before my change, and I want to be in love still. What if the change did something awful like make me straight? My head is spinning and I'm so anxious I can't breathe. Not breathing makes the spinning worse 'til I don't think anything can stop it, and it seems implausible that stick-thin arms are able to stop it by wrapping around me. One moment I have vertigo and the next I'm totally centered, with a head and toes and a front and a back that's pleasantly aware of being pressed against curves. I arch into her and she nuzzles my neck and the connection-the love-is still there.

She kisses my neck with her lips tightly pursed. Dry, like she isn't sure I'll like it. I squirm onto my stomach and she tenses like I'm pulling away, but then I try to give her the right idea with a kiss. Our reunion isn't exactly X-rated, given that her grandpa might walk in on us, but her little hands start teaching me to love my new body. 'I love you's and 'thank you's are exchanged, though I'm not sure what _she's_ thanking _me_ for. 'You came back' is her answer, and when she asks where I went, I realize it's a reasonable question. Reasonable but weird as hell to think about, which is probably why I've been avoiding it. Weirder still, I may have an answer. Her question is triggering a flood of trippy memories.

The memories are set in the waterfall in the woods. The place where I dream about dead people. But I remember all those dreams, and this isn't one of them. When I dream, the dead people don't get this emotional.

Dad and Seth were high-fiving in the memory and Jake was scowling at them, or maybe at me. Then he opened his mouth and he must have been scowling at _me_, because he's telling me that I made the wrong choice.

"Leah? Hey…it's alright. You don't have to tell me." Nessie's voice somehow gets prettier when it cracks.

"Hey, yourself. I'm not upset. Just give me a sec-I'm trying to remember."

"Okay, but…be careful? You got that look on your face again. The same as before-right before you went away."

"Relax, babe. I have to get back in that zone to remember. I won't leave you again. I'll be careful."

Ness chews her lip-the opposite of relaxing-and I feel bad for stressing her out. I can't explain why, but it's really important to remember where I went. Those snapshot waterfall memories were so strange…so different…I have to know if there's more where they came from. I squeeze Nessie's hand to tell her I'm sorry but I have to do this, and neither of us closes our eyes when I lean in to kiss her. I suck gently on the lip she was biting, trying to soothe her, then move my kisses down her neck and rest my cheek there. My left fingers are laced through hers still, so I slip my right arm around her waist. I trace patterns on the small of her back under her top and she holds me close with the brunt of her vampire strength.

"You're an idiot, Leah," I remember Jake snarling when my thoughts drift back to the waterfall scene. "We're gone. Nessie needs you. What the hell are you thinking, coming after us and leaving her out in the cold?" On instinct, I told Jake to shut the fuck up, but Dad glared at me and Seth waggled his fingers in his ears.

"Okay, guys. You win," I said, putting my hands in the air, like, whatever. "Clearly I'm the idiot here because I don't know what's going on."

"C'mon, Jake. She couldn't help it," said Seth. My brother: ever charitable; ever clueless. His words made me remember what had happened with Ness before I'd blacked out, and I realized that Jake was right.

"I could've helped it," I mumbled, kicking a rock and willing the tears to stay put.

Nessie's touches by the stream had made me scream so hard that I felt like I was floating above our bodies. It felt so good-ridiculously good-but that isn't why I'd screamed that she had to keep going. I'd known something scary was happening to me and that Nessie was somehow causing it, but I was also having an epiphany of sorts and was too euphoric to think it through.

The epiphany concerned a legend I'd read the first time I visited Hermie and Helen. I hadn't understood the legend, but it had stuck with me because I was never supposed to see it. Helen had shoved the book under a cushion as I was walking through their door, and I'd retrieved it while they were fixing some sketchy "tea." One page was dog eared: a story called "The devil child and her grandfather kill the devil weed blight."

I think the story had a prequel, which I couldn't be bothered to look for, but I gathered that this 'mongrel' girl and her grandfather were outcasts. He'd eaten some poison herbs and she'd used a goat (wtf?) to cure him, after which they started living by themselves on the outskirts of La Push. Of course, they came rushing back to save the day when some kid ate the same herbs that had poisoned the grandfather. The kid was delirious the way the grandfather had apparently been. The moral was that the grandfather knew how to find the kid's spirit and his freak girl helped him bring the kid back from there.

The part of the story that came back to me during sex was the way in which the freak helped bring the sick kid back. She had to touch the grandfather's face and touch some animal the kid had liked, concentrating really hard on her memories of the kid when he was healthy. She wasn't quite human but had special powers of some kind, and that those powers helped the grandfather go on a mission to the spirit land he had visited when he was sick himself.

"Leah? You okay?" Nessie jerks me back to the present.

"'Course I'm okay. Just thinking." I lift my head to rub my nose against hers. "I never said sorry, so I'll say it now. I think I could have stopped what was happening by the stream. Never gone away and made you worry. I could tell something bad was starting to happen."

"So why did you tell me to keep going?" she asks in a small voice.

"Remember when I told you about the dead people dreams?" She nods. "I was thinking…what if Seth and my dad and Jake are trapped in some spirit world? If you kept up what you were doing, I felt like I was gonna have an out-of-body experience, and I just thought…maybe I'd find them and be able to save them. Like in the prophecy."

Her eyes get wide. "_Did_ you find them?"

"For a little while…yeah. I did."

"Then I'm sorry. I brought you back when maybe I shouldn't have."

"Uh, Ness? You saved my life by rescuing me. Spirit Jake was ready to skin me alive for breaking my promise to look after you."

"Uh, Leah? You never learned that Jake's bark was worse than his bite?"

"Spirit Jake isn't like that. My subconscious means business. Its figments bite when they say they're gonna bite."

"But Leah, what if you _didn't_ make him up? What if you were really close to rescuing him? All of them?"

"Figment or no, Spirit Jake was right." I tug on the ruffles that border her shirt. "You come first. Could I risk leaving you alone with leeches who dress you like _this_?"

"Be serious." I _was_ half serious, but damn-that stare of hers can get scary! "I'm afraid for you-how could I _not_ be?-but you've been waiting for this chance. You're not going to give up on Seth for me."

We decide we should look up the legend I half remember from Helen's book, so we head for Angela's house after springing me out of the hospital. Carlisle obliges us pretty quickly on that front, like he knows when his granddaughter can't be messed with. Angela finds the legend in a heartbeat-turns out that its prequel inspired my rescue. So the girl in the story was a vampire hybrid like Ness. I wasn't crazy for connecting them. Amazing.

I wonder aloud whether bringing back Jake and the others would work just like bringing me back did. As in, could Nessie transport each one of them into his spirit animal by thinking really hard about who he was? But the girl in the story couldn't save the little boy without her grandfather's help. Apparently her personal connection to the kid hadn't been strong enough for her to find him by herself. The grandfather was able to help her since he had been to the spirit realm and back and knew vaguely where the boy's spirit could be found.

"We don't even know what their fucking spirit animals are!" I complain when the stress of the task starts getting to me.

"I'll bet I know two of them," Nessie surprises me by answering. "Remember how Jake was such a natural at being a wolf, and Seth really loved it too? It can't have been just because they inherited the wolf gene from both sides of the family. You did too, and you never felt comfortable as a wolf the way they did."

"That would be anticlimactic," I snort. "Wasn't the whole point of the Redeemer story that they need to be 'freed from the wolf parasite'?"

"Right." Ness rolls her eyes. "Because you believe every point those shamans make."

"Touche, touche."

Since no one has a better idea, we decide to go off on a wolf hunt. There are a couple of packs of grey wolves in Olympic National Park, though the Cullens never hunt them since they're endangered. Bella and Edward agree to come with us when we clue them in on our theories-it seems like Nessie's started to get closer to her parents lately, and she doesn't want to go off and leave them to worry about her. We invite Carlisle too, on the off chance that his fancy-schmancy theories might be useful.

I've just started getting nervous about the size of our party when Alice bursts in on our planning session. She insists we'll need help steering clear of park rangers and oh goody, we're now a party of six. Make that seven, including Jasper, since teeny-bopper vampires must hold hands with their high school sweethearts at all times.

I start wishing with all my heart that the "spirit realm" will swallow me and get me out of this situation. Am I seriously going to try to bring people back from the dead? On a camping trip with most of Nessie's family? Fulfilling my mystical destiny would be scary all by itself, and frankly, so would the camping trip. The only thing going for me is that they no longer feel like blood enemies. The vamps no longer smell bad to me-no worse than potpourri, anyway. Maybe if I don't stink to them either, at this point, I'll be able to make a halfway decent impression.

A/N: Please review! I'll answer any questions you still have. I'd also like to rec a great Sue and Charlie one shot: "We Who are Left Behind" by Openhome. Openhome's characterizations are some of the best I've seen in canon Twific, and her piece really helped me think through Sue's and Leah's relationship.


	17. It's Just Love

A/N: Here's the last full chapter of my story. I tried to do our heroines justice with lots of help from SecretlySeverus, Reamhar, and BelleDean. Thanks for your patience. Enjoy!

_~Renesmee~_

Sue doesn't show much emotion, at first, when Leah and I show up on her doorstep at sunset. She doesn't invite us in, just sits down on her porch swing and avoids looking directly at us or at the sun. We ride out a deafening silence or two, but stop talking when her tears begin to fall.

"You're going off to do something stupid. I can tell," she says. "Don't come back until you're back for real."

Both Leah and I are crying with remorse by the time I steer our car out of Sue's driveway. To be honest, my tears are much more selfish than that. Sue's right-our crazy mission might be dangerous.

"What makes you think your dad is in the same-er, spirit place as the others?" I ask Leah without looking away from the road. We have to help our families if we can…I know that…but I can't lose Leah. Not again.

At first, Leah acts like she doesn't hear me, but then she motions for me to pull over. Once my eyes are free to lock with hers, she draws a shaky breath and starts talking. A garbled stream of science words comes out of her mouth, and I nod like it's making sense, knowing I can get the details from Carlisle later. This is the first I've heard about her father's latent imprint-Carlisle must have felt that it was Leah's secret to tell me.

"When Sam imprinted, I-I thought my parents had no idea what I was going through." For the first time, Leah looks down, breaking our eye contact. I almost tell her that she doesn't have to look ashamed for mentioning Sam to me, but I keep my mouth shut when she draws another breath.

"I thought they didn't know shit about being in love," she goes on. "You know how I am. I say whatever the hell I'm thinking. I must have hurt my mom's feelings so fucking much."

I nod. "I've hurt my parents' feelings a lot too, I think. I love, them it's just…I hate feeling like I'm stranded on a desert island with them. I complained about how weird we were a lot when I was little, and I never realized how much it hurt my dad. How he's always felt guilty about taking normal human life away from my mom."

Leah winces when I mention the desert island. Of course…she's dreading being trapped in a car with my family on the road trip.

"I'm really sorry about the whole family inviting themselves along. It's funny…my mom can get touchy about Alice being too 'enthusiastic,' but I never understood why until yesterday."

"Yeah yeah, you and Bella are two peas in a pod these days."

"Whatever. I wouldn't go _that_ far."

I watch Leah twine her fingers together in her lap, and my face melts into a pout before I can stop it. My own fingers are drumming the steering wheel, itching to twine around her fingers, so I poke her in the ribs for being all composed like that.

Well, I wanted to break her composure and I've definitely succeeded-her knees and elbows and head all flail and bang on things. Right…she's more ticklish than she used to be. I should have remembered-I'm such a jerk-but she grabs my wrists before I can cover my eyes. Our lips and tongues and teeth all clash together, awkward and clumsy and desperate. I can't decide whether it's like we've been apart for centuries or whether it's like we've never kissed before.

"Hey," I try to whisper, but my tongue runs into Leah's and the message gets hopelessly garbled. I was saying…what? It was important I think…maybe…but the windows are fogging up…what is there but _her_? There was something important…can't see…should clear this fog…a juicy neck kiss and I have Leah distracted. I free my hands. Lest she try to bring the fog back, I grab her wrists instead. I've always been stronger, so this feels familiar. Not too weird.

"I wanted to say…" I'm remembering now. "I know how it feels to have a new body. When I was little, I felt like I grew a new body every month. A new mind too-that part was worse. Half the time I didn't know what I liked, really. I outgrew things before I knew I liked them."

"I know one thing I like. Love, even." Leah licks her lips theatrically and I giggle.

"I love you too. I'm not worried your change will mess us up, just…I feel bad you have so much on your plate right now. You shouldn't have to, like, save your people and deal with my family at the same time. Not before you get to know yourself again."

She raises an eyebrow. "Not sure I want to 'get to know myself' right this second. No offense, but it's pathetic that the coolest thing I've ever done is get rescued by my super-powered girlfriend." It's Leah's turn to poke me in the ribs. "I wanna wait and get to know myself once I'm, like, this tribal hero who saves people from the dead."

"You don't have to say the exact right thing to make me feel better," I tell her doubtfully. "Or do the right thing," I murmur into her sweet, hungry lips.

It feels amazing to be alone together, but the inside of the car is too cramped. After Leah bumps her knees and elbows a couple more times, I insist on driving us home. Luckily, we find a note on the cottage mantelpiece that says my parents won't be back 'til tomorrow morning, and we upset half my parents' furniture in our eagerness to get to my bedroom.

We fall asleep after pretty thoroughly wearing each other out, but I wake up when I start to dream that Leah's in pain. It wasn't just a dream-she has bruises. A lot of them. From activities she kept wanting rougher and rougher. I should have second-guessed her, but I didn't want to kill the mood, and we've been avoiding all discussions of her new fragility. It's too close to the subject of immortality, and I'm scared to know Leah's feelings on that subject.

Carlisle tested her for an enzyme that immortal cells produce, and I heard him saying the results were inconclusive. I don't even know whether she _wants_ to be immortal, and if she doesn't…I swallow a lump in my throat.

o00o

"Esme? Can I ask you something?" I hang on the doorframe and droop my body into the kitchen. From the quantity of food that Esme's packing for the trip, it's hard to believe that just Leah, Angela, and I will be eating.

"You can ask me anything, sweetheart. Come in." She sits down and pulls out a chair for me, but smiles when I choose her lap instead.

"What was it like for you and Carlisle when you were young? Was it weird getting married when he was sort of…your dad?"

"Not weird in the way you mean." Esme starts to untangle one of my curls like it's a puzzle. "I don't think the relationship of child to parent is very like what a vampire is to her creator. The husband/wife relationship is more similar, in many ways. Who are you thinking about, Nessie? Your parents?"

"My parents? Um, no, not really. Just…he brought you back a different person, Esme. A different species. You didn't know yourself anymore-you'd lost yourself."

"Yes, it's true that I didn't know myself at first. I didn't know how easily I could kill. I did kill a man…did you know that?" I nod. "I ran away and Carlisle didn't try to follow. He should have followed, as I might have killed others, but he was busy destroying the body to protect me. I hated him for that, but I hated him more for taking away my right to die of despair. Because Carlisle hadn't let me die when I decided to, an innocent man had died in my place."

"How did you forgive him?" I ask. Her tone is so soothing, and the story is so…not, and the effect of them together is disorienting.

"I had to accept that my husband and I would be selfish and blind sometimes."

"Esme, you're not-you're the least selfish people I know!"

"I saw the man's fiancee in the park where I killed him," she says dreamily. "She was grieving for him, obviously, but at that moment, I couldn't. There wasn't room in my thoughts for anyone but Carlisle. I went home to him and I never went away again. Our love killed that man, Nessie. It ruined that woman's life. But when we're alone together, she doesn't exist. It's terrible to say, but it's true."

"Yeah…I get that. It's like how Leah and I knew our love was hurting Jake, but we still couldn't stay away from each other. I guess we sort of turned each other into killers." I shiver. Back when there was no hope for Jake, I couldn't have _thought_ those words, much less said them. "It must feel different, though," I go on. "What I did to her this time. I changed _her_, not just something about her circumstances."

"Leah hasn't changed you physically. Does that mean she hasn't changed you?" Fine. Esme's question is rhetorical. "What you have is not so strange," she presses on gently. "It's just love."

Her eyes silently ask me why I'm awake and worried. I thought I knew, but really…I have no idea. Am I worried what'll happen if the rescue attempt goes wrong? Yes, it clearly has to do with that. Am I worried that Leah and I will hurt someone by mistake? Yes…not exactly. I don't know. I kiss Esme goodnight and walk back to the cottage. My heart pinches when I get into bed and see Leah's bruises, but I guess bruises are a small price to pay for bringing Jake back?

I wish I could erase that thought as soon as it crosses my mind; it means if we fail, I've put Leah through hell for nothing.

o00o

Angela is pretty talkative on the drive up to the park. My mom looks more surprised about that than I feel. She could be trying to take the talking pressure off Leah, but I can tell she's also just excited to be here. Myths, questions and myth-questions keep on pouring out of her mouth, and I don't think that would stop if my dad stopped questioning her. He's discretely rubbing the bridge of his nose when she takes a breath, and I can tell he's waiting for her to freak out about being so close to vampires.

"Dad, I think Angela needs a water break," I say, curious about her freak-out potential myself. I decide it's pretty low when she chugs the water with wide, active eyes, watching us eagerly without seeming worried we'll chug her blood.

Dad never gets tired of talking about how unique Mom was for not being afraid of him, and I decide to get Angela talking again before her calmness can burst Dad's bubble. Alice, however, has other ideas.

"If we're done with the boring talk?" she pipes up in front of me, scrambling into the backseat when nobody denies this. I receive a nice-if random-big hug and kiss, and Leah blinks stoically through the same treatment.

"Thank you for the happy surprise," Alice squeals. Okay…now I'm even more confused. "I've never really had one before," she goes on. "I didn't even think I'd like surprises!"

"It was real nice to be there when she found out you two were seein' each other," Jasper adds, grinning shyly back at us.

"Unbelievable." I pout. "I used to surprise you both with pencil holders and bookmarks every birthday."

The closer we get to the park, the muddier and narrower the roads become. My dad has to drive slower, which makes him tense up, and that tension seems to thicken the shadows cast by the trees. Not a smart idea to make that comparison, since the tree shadows get even thicker when we start hiking in.

It's somber going for the first mile because we're so unnaturally quiet. All except Ange, whose heavy breathing seems to voice the whole group's anxiety. Luckily, it lightens the mood and quickens the pace when Alice lifts Ange onto her shoulders. She seems at ease there and isn't too much taller than she normally is.

We aren't running or anything, but at this rate we should still reach wolf territory by nightfall. Maybe sooner than nightfall if Leah keeps picking up the pace like she's been doing. She started off clumsy but that's disappearing fast; at times, she's even more graceful than she used to be.

The trail steepens enough that we do have to slow down eventually, and it's nearly dark by the time we set up camp. We set up the giant car camping tents that Jasper carried in on his back, and most of the non-sleepers head out to do wolf reconnaissance. Just before they leave, I see Angela make eye contact with Bella, and Bella doubtfully offers to stay behind as a guard. They retreat into one tent; Leah and I into the other. I feel like we all have too much to say and too few words to say it in.

"How are we gonna know whether the wolves we find are the right ones?" I ask Leah once we're bundled up inside our tent. Her body temperature has cooled slightly and she's wearing two thick sweaters, but we're both on edge and haven't unrolled our sleeping bags.

"You had some big epiphany about my deer being the 'right' deer." Leah scribbles something down on her notepad.

"These notes on Seth and Jake that we're making?" I let my own notepad thud onto the ground. "It's not epiphany material, you know? I got you back 'cause I knew I _had_ to get you back or I'd fall apart. My powers just like, kicked into this frenzy and did stuff."

Leah lies down on her stomach without putting down a ground pad, shivering as the cold ground sucks away her body heat. She scribbles for another few seconds, then laces her fingers together under her chin.

"How come you'd have fallen apart if I hadn't come back?"

"I _love_ you!"

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

She turns away from me. "I hate how our love story has all this extra crap in it. No offense, but your family is stressing me out. And don't get me started on all this destined-to-love-each-other garbage. It's like imprinting all over again."

"You think I was _programmed_ to love you, or something?"

"There's so much sci fi in our genes, Ness. Makes me wonder how much choice we get about anything. You just said yourself that if you didn't love me, you couldn't have changed me into this Redeemer gal. So bringing people back from wolf hell is basically the whole point of us loving each other."

"Leah? That's such bullshit! I love you 'cause I love you. I can't believe you'd say it has a _point_!"

"Fuck…this isn't coming out right. I just meant you shouldn't be all worried about tomorrow…like, of course your instincts will kick in again or whatever and you'll bring Jake back just fine. Or else how could you have done it for me?"

"I told you." I sniff. "I could do it for you because I love you. What we have is just love. It isn't so strange."

"I love you so much I can't think straight," Leah says dully. "Hence, I can't lie and say I'm positive there's free will involved here."

"You could believe there's free will involved here," I mumble. "That doesn't require thinking straight. I'm positive I'd love you the same way if we were both human."

"I wish we were human, Ness. I wish that so bad."

We stay awake in separate sleeping bags for most of the night. I only know I've dozed off when I'm woken up by yapping. Leah and I scramble out of the tent to find five wolves tethered to trees. Guess the easy part of the mission was a success.

Five hours later, the hard part of the mission is still very much anybody's game. The most significant thing the wolves have done so far is claw my clothes to shreds. For now, we're focusing on Jake since I was closer to him than to Seth and he should be easier for me to get in touch with. My notebook and my brain are packed with stories about who Jake was, but they all seem really past tense and far removed from what we're trying to do.

Leah, for her part, doesn't seem to know how to help me. She wrote down everything she's ever heard spirit Jake do and say, but I don't really know how to put that to use. It would help me more to hold her hand and know that she believed in me, but our argument still stings and we haven't been touching. Ironic, how Leah's felt burdened by her destiny all this time when I'm the one with the hard job in the end.

My thoughts are getting bratty, I know, and I'm not surprised when Edward asks me to take a little walk with him. If I said no, he couldn't argue, but I really need a break, so I shuffle off after him into the trees. We don't go far-just out of sight of Leah and the wolves. I'll be Edward wants to keep an eye on her thoughts while we talk.

"Don't get upset with Leah," he tells me. "She's distraught that she can't do more to help you. As am I."

"I'm almost grown up, _Edward._ You can't keep babying me and trying to fight my battles."

"For starters," he says, "I think you're making a mistake by calling your task a 'battle.'"

"I.e. you're freaked out that I had a fight with Leah and you want me to erase all fight-y words from my vocabulary."

"In case you haven't noticed," Leah says, stomping toward us through the trees, "we're knee deep in prophecy shit right now. Can't you wait 'til that's taken care of to go all over-involved parent on our relationship?"

"I wasn't the one who brought up your relationship, Leah," Edward answers.

"I am fucking sick of your high and mighty bullshit!" She smacks a tree. Her wrist groans at the insult and I cry out before she does.

"Leah, you can't _do_ that anymore! Is it broken? It's swelling! Where's Carlisle?"

I help her sit down on a log and extend her fingers. Now that she's in pain, it's ludicrous to think about an argument having the power to keep me from touching her.

"You were right for all I know," I whisper, stroking her hair. "About our love being programmed into us. Honestly though…who cares? If we love each other, we love each other."

"Jake never cared," Leah answers. "Imprinting used to creep him out, but that didn't last, obviously. When you weigh 'creeped out' against 'madly in love'…"

"'Creeped out' never had a chance."

"I thought he was a dumbass for caving on his principles." Leah wipes her nose. "He fell for you, and…_bam_. Imprinting was suddenly the best thing ever."

I nod. "Jake followed his heart. He didn't worry that much about principles. If he felt something, than he felt it. He wouldn't obsess over why."

"Yeah, for sure. He was like that before the imprint too. The way he swallowed his pride for your mom…" Leah shakes her head. "Your dad skips town, she needs a shoulder to cry on, and Jake steps right up to the plate. She never stopped thinking about your dad, but Jake just took whatever she'd give him. I take it back-he didn't _swallow_ his pride back then. Saving face wasn't something he thought about to begin with."

"That's beautiful, in a way. Poor Jake." My eyes are tearing up. "I mean…he and my mom would've both been miserable if Jake had been too proud to hang out with her. I'm not sure I could've kept being there for someone who didn't love me back, though."

"I dunno about that, Ness. You see reason when you feel like it. I'll bet you could ditch your pride if that's what it took to be happy."

We aren't really talking about Jake and Bella anymore. Leah's stare is hot enough to strip that pretense away.

"Yeah, you're right." I blow out a breath. "So maybe we are like…puppets. And our love is some cosmic plan. I just want to keep loving you for however long it lasts. Even if this is some kind of, like, temporary love spell…" I gulp. "I'll never, ever forget the things I've felt for you."

"Kiss me," Leah croaks, getting up and pressing me into the tree. It's a lopsided movement, since I'm keeping her hurt wrist hostage. Aside from not wanting her to damage it more, I like the way it feels beneath my fingers-as it swells with blood, it reminds me of the racier sexcapades we've enjoyed.

My boring childhood made me pretty good at checking out of reality, and I bring that skill to bear to calm myself now. Leah is making me feel good, and those feelings are all I need to think about. Not the past; not the future; not any of my worries. I whine when Leah disconnects our lips, moving her good hand from my neck to twine our fingers together. "You can do it," she whispers, but my head is still foggy.

There's so much to like about the sound of Leah's words that their sense washes over me without getting through. Her voice has layers, soft, gritty layers, like the decomposing pine needles under our feet. We should make love in the pine needles. That would feel good. Right now I have to do something else, though.

Leah takes my hand and leads me somewhere. I focus on her eyes, not caring where we're going. Eventually, we stop and she guides our hands to something soft. A wolf muzzle with a wet dollop of nose. Without thinking, I lean down to kiss the nose and squeeze the little guy to thank him for being here. How long has it been since I touched a wolf, before today? About a week, but a week is a long time when you're me. A lot of sad times can fit in a week. A lot of happy times too, but the memories are jumbled. I have to think about Jake now-un-jumble him from everything else. That's why I'm holding all these notes, but they haven't been working.

I let the notes flutter to the ground, and Leah doesn't try to retrieve them. She trusts that I know what I'm doing, and I think I do. Notes may be Angela's style, but I do better with pictures. I focus on remembering the pictures of myself that march across my parents' cottage mantelpiece.

Although they're photos of me, ostensibly, Jake is usually in the frame or just off camera. They tell a story about a guy who made me smile and laugh a lot, omitting times that I was too big a brat to laugh with him. There's awareness in his face and blindness in mine-he knew I was hurting him, accepted that, and let me stay oblivious. I made him happy sometimes-the pictures are testament to that-because he didn't resent that I was so wrapped up in myself. Not a nice picture of me, all things considered, but it's okay. I can accept that. Jake accepted me for the oblivious brat I was, and I'll have to do the same to channel him properly.

As checked out from reality as I am, I catch a few excited, whispery noises. My family? Angela? It's coming from their general direction. Probably reacting to the fact that the fur is rippling under my hands.

I should probably open my eyes and watch the magic for myself, but as soon as I consider it, the ripples stop. Okay…whatever. I gather my thoughts again, focusing on Jake's devotion to stupid, selfish me.

Soon, the fur starts rippling again, but I try not to pay attention this time. The only part of the outside world I let into my head is the pressure of Leah's hand on mine. She isn't trembling or making excited noises at all, just caressing my fingers like I'm asleep. Her touch makes it clear that she'll still love me if I fail-we'll mourn, but we won't blame anybody. We could be happy in Canada studying pine trees together…I want to know what she loved before she met me. My mind is halfway back to pine needle sex when Jake hug-attacks me and starts whooping.

A/N: I hope you liked it…the epilogue should be up soon. What did you think?


	18. Epilogue: The Funeral

A/N: Here's a special thank you to Reamhar and SecretlySeverus for seeing my story through to its end. I've learned so much from them, as well as from everyone who's reviewed.

_~Leah: Seventy years later~_

The older I get, the less I believe that that spirit animal bogus was ever legit. It's a suspiciously good excuse for my wolf-soul-mate brother to own dog after slobbering dog. He only keeps them away from me half the time I visit, I might add, the half the time when I rehash our troubled youth. When I remind him how poor Ness had to meditate for weeks just to rescue him from his pet's sinister kinsmen.

Everyone was safe and sound in the end, blah blah blah. He always reminds me of that. We found Dad in a half-dead dog that once belonged to Embry's grandma. It's surreal to remember that reunion still…good surreal, but also just intense. When Seth or anyone else casually brings back those memories, I make an excuse to leave and have a date with my favorite old trees.

Jake and Seth were so excited to welcome Dad back that the clapped him on the shoulder and knocked him over. The worst part was that I couldn't even keep dad from falling-I was frail like him, not rejuvenated like Jake and Seth. Even Carlisle could confirm that my body was in some kind of limbo-I wasn't aging like Jake and Seth were, at least not yet. Every day I prayed (to no deity in particular) that my body would make up its mind. I just wanted that pained look of longing to leave Nessie's face.

As soon as was marginally polite, the day of the reunion, I made off for a circle of firs I'd seen that morning. I was choking up with guilt for putting my family ahead of Ness, and I almost snapped at her for making the feeling worse when I found her sitting on a fir stump. I didn't snap, thank god, and she didn't even say hi to me. She just held a folded piece of paper up out of my reach and handed me a blank sheet and a pencil. Without looking down or trying to hide what I was writing, I scrawled, _The goddamned mission is over, and I still love you._

Before I finished writing, she dropped her folded up paper in the dirt. I didn't try to pick it up…I just let her kiss me. The next time Carlisle ran a test on me, I was making immortality enzymes or whatever. Maybe a coincidence, but I doubt it.

There is one thing I seem to have lost to the wolves forever: I'm still a genetic dead end. My period never came back, but…I'll deal. I've changed more than enough diapers at this point, what with Jake, Seth, and Dad having babies and grand-babies. They all got married, sooner or later, and of course my mom married Charlie. I think I even changed Angela's baby's diapers once or twice, before she moved back east for that fancy professor gig.

Mom, Dad, and Charlie have been dead for more than twenty years. It shouldn't hurt anymore, I think, but it still really does. I'm physically still an age where having no parents is a weird, sad thing, but since when has my physical age had anything to do with anything? When I was _really_ twenty years old, I turned into a wolf and lost my dad…basically grew up hyper-fast 'til I felt a hundred. The older I get though, the more distant that time seems, and the younger I feel, in a lot of ways.

Ness broke down in private after Charlie's funeral, and we talked about Jake's death for the first time in years. Charlie was old, and it was a completely different deal, but the difference doesn't really register when you're immortal.

Some of our tears that night were for Jake, never mind that he came back safe and sound. It wasn't that we didn't love beer-bellied Grandpa Jake, more that young Jake vanished forever without anyone noticing.

I definitely wonder what Grandma Leah would look like sometimes. Ness wonders the same thing aloud. I counter by wondering what her kids would look like, which isn't even hypothetical-we think she could have them. Jake even gave her a vial of his sperm for her birthday once. It was a joke, but she keeps it in Carlisle's fanciest freezer.

We've talked about that vial off-and-on over the years. Not jokingly, but not super-seriously either. We've gotten in the habit of talking more seriously about it after funerals, but so far it's stayed frozen, and I'm totally fine with that. Rather, I'd be fine if not for the reason behind Ness's cold feet: the fact that she perfectly remembers her childhood as far from perfect.

On the surface, it's not clear why Nessie's childhood was so awful. She was loved and rich and way too perfect to punish. I might not understand how she feels, as much as I love her, if I couldn't experience her memories firsthand. It hurts more than you might think to grow up with a secret identity you can't talk about, to watch actors on TV and know that they can stop acting whenever they want, when you can never stop acting unless you're alone with your family.

I'm positive we're going to have the sperm talk today. We're going to a funeral, but that's not the main reason. Until yesterday, there was more where that sperm came from (cue cringe), but now…there isn't. Jake's gone.

Jake is going to be honored with traditional trappings galore. His resurrection made the Quileutes more religious on the whole, though their faith was never quite the same again. Hermie and Helen got to come out of hiding and were put on the council for a while. We all kept in touch with them sort of, but still…we wouldn't have had them give the eulogy if they were still alive.

Nessie takes a little longer to get dressed and glammed up than I do, so I'm waiting in our living room for her to come downstairs. I'm glad the staircase is straight and exposed enough that I get several seconds of good staring time.

It's not that Ness looks especially glammed after all-her silk dress is a little wrinkled and the part in her hair is askew. I'm dazzled by the way she looks more in control of herself than she's looked at a funeral before. She's been crying; you can tell-she never pretends to be okay when she's not-but when she sees me, she smiles a smile that comes from her eyes.

A/N: My second special thank you is for everyone who's followed my story to its end. I hope you'll forgive me for not resolving everything, but as a reader, I like being free to imagine a certain amount for myself. Nothing would make me happier than to inspire more Leah and Nessie stories; for some of you to say what I left out or correct what I got wrong. Thank you for getting to know me a little through my story, and for letting me get to know you a little through your reviews. I would love to meet more of you now that it's over, and for you to consider griping about the stuff I need to improve on, even if you've never done so. Thanks again for reading!


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